Unskilled labour before the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is seen as a major turning point in the management of labour, bringing about employment practices that gave structure and stability to the workforce. This paper provides evidence that employers were using hiring and retention strategies to stabilize the unskilled workforce at least a century before industrialization. We exploit the comprehensive employment records that survive from the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (1672–1748) to reconstruct and analyse the employment history of over one thousand general building labourers, the benchmark category of unskilled workers for economic historians. We show that St. Paul’s was able to stabilize its workforce by establishing a core group of long-standing workers. Tenure was incentivized with more days of work each month on the site, priority in the queue for retention and rehiring in periods of low labour demand, and the opportunity to earn additional income as watchmen. These strategies reduced turnover and may have allowed the Cathedral to retain the most productive workers, reshaping our understanding of when modern employment practices emerged.