I enjoyed reading this article on the 5 most common jobs in a medieval city.
What’s cool about the work is the author uses tax records from 14th and 15th century Montpellier to get a picture of the distribution of work across the population.
Unsurprisingly, farming took the top spot with 16% of taxpayers—this job was mainly filled by peasants who resided outside the city walls. Carpenter was understandably 2nd, but at a much lower 6%. Interestingly, shoemaker was 4th on the list with 4%.
Due to the industrial revolution, the emergence of the limited liability company, vertical integration, and globalisation (I’m sure among many other factors), we now have large corporations who now fulfil our farming, carpentry, and shoe producing needs with a tiny fraction of the effort that was once required.
I couldn’t help but wonder what they would think about our jobs today; all these people scurrying off to monolithic, glass blocks in metropolitan cities to type away at keyboards, only to then head home 8 hours later.