This article makes use of nearly 25,000 observations representing over 95,000 paid workdays across over 300 years to investigate individual work patterns, work availability, and the changes in work seasonality over time. This sample is comprised of workers in the construction industry, and includes unskilled men and women as well as skilled building craftsmen – the industry that is often used to estimate comparative real wages through early modern Europe. Data come predominantly from Scania, the southernmost region in modern day Sweden, and especially from Malmö, the largest town in the region.

Findings indicate that workers probably do not engage in paid labour on a purely labour-supply-based schedule, but are strongly impacted by the demand for construction labour, which was highly seasonal and impacted by local labour institutions. Seasonality was stronger further back in the past, indicating that finding long-term work may have been more difficult in earlier periods. A typical work year could probably not have been longer than 150 days, and would be made up of shorter work spells at several different sites. This is not enough work to meet standard assumptions of 250 days, or enough work for an unskilled man to support his family at a respectable level. Individual workers rarely worked more than a handful of days in a year on a construction site, even when labour demand was high, indicating that they did not maximize their income from waged labour.

本文利用 300 多年来代表超过 95000 个带薪工作日的近 25,000 次观察来调查个人工作模式、工作可用性以及工作季节性随时间的变化。该样本由建筑行业的工人组成，包括非熟练的男性和女性以及熟练的建筑工匠——该行业在现代早期欧洲经常被用来估计比较实际工资。数据主要来自现代瑞典最南端的地区斯堪尼亚，尤其是该地区最大的城镇马尔默。

研究结果表明，工人可能不会纯粹以劳动力供应为基础的时间表从事有偿劳动，而是受到建筑劳动力需求的强烈影响，而建筑劳动力需求具有高度季节性，并受到当地劳动机构的影响。过去，季节性更强，这表明在早期寻找长期工作可能更加困难。一个典型的工作年可能不会超过 150 天，并且由几个不同地点的较短工作时间组成。这项工作不足以满足 250 天的标准假设，也不足以让一个不熟练的男人以体面的水平养家糊口。即使在劳动力需求很高的情况下，个体工人在建筑工地一年中工作的时间也很少超过几天，这表明他们没有最大限度地从雇佣劳动中获得收入。