Abstract

The functioning of labour market in pre-industrial era is still a puzzling phenomenon. Using the payrolls of the Royal Palace of Palermo, this paper adopts a micro-data approach to disentangle how the labour market operated, focusing on the length of the working year and progression of careers. This paper provides three main insights. First, the estimates confirm the length of the working year, which is commonly assumed to be approximately 250 working days. Second, the primary labour market was segmented, and members of the guilds that belonged to a family network had faster career. Third, in the secondary market, unskilled workers who could not access the primary one were rewarded more time on the building site instead of a wage increase.