IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/econwp/486.html

(Male) wages in Switzerland, 1750-1860

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Baltensperger
  • Cédric Chambru
  • Jakob Metzler
  • Ulrich Woitek

Abstract

We estimate daily wage rates for skilled and unskilled construction workers and agricultural laborers in Switzerland from 1750 to 1860, a period of profound political and economic transformations. Our analysis is based on 17,700 newly collected wage quotes from primary sources and 23,300 price quotes from primary and secondary sources. We find that wages and prices were remarkably similar among different Swiss regions. We therefore construct price and wage series for the entire territory. Nominal wages remained largely unchanged during the second half of the eighteenth century, rose markedly around 1800 and then held at that level until 1850. Real wages stagnated as a result of rising price levels. Contrary to earlier claims of low Swiss wages, wages in the construction sector were similar to those in neighboring European regions, in particular France and Germany. We quantify the uncertainty in our wage estimates that arises from sampling uncertainty and potentially undocumented in-kind benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Baltensperger & Cédric Chambru & Jakob Metzler & Ulrich Woitek, 2026. "(Male) wages in Switzerland, 1750-1860," ECON - Working Papers 486, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:486
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/bitstreams/b623eb29-9db8-4090-92a7-1f846eeb696f/download
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J4 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:486. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/seizhch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.