Historical

Wage evidence comes from building accounts of cathedrals and castles, which record day rates for masons, carpenters and their help...

Pay was annual, deducted for food, clothing and gear, meaning net cash could be thin, but the system's real economics were the com...

Nominal weekly pay for adult men in textile districts ran around one to two pounds for skilled roles and far less for women and ch...

The headline puzzle: output per hour rose roughly two and a half times since the late 1960s while typical real wages crept. Measur...

The Fair Labor Standards Act set a 25-cent floor in 1938, and real value peaked in 1968 when 1.60 dollars bought what well over 12...

The story is automation first and trade second: real manufacturing output kept climbing as employment fell, with the China trade s...

Common wages back East ran around one to two dollars a day, while Sacramento and San Francisco shops competed for any labor at all...

With wartime boards clamping wages to fight inflation, the loophole was fringes: health coverage and pensions were not controlled,...

The act amended the wage law to ban sex-based differentials for equal work, enforced through the labor department and later the EE...

Turnover on the new moving assembly line at Highland Park was crippling, with workers quitting the monotonous jobs in huge numbers...

The Black Death killed a large share of the English population in 1348 and 1349, and surviving workers demanded much higher pay. T...