Commerce: Great Britain. Full-Time Earnings, Adult Males. Index. 1781-1819

Note: These are earnings of workers at various levels based, not on dollars, but on an index (like the Consumer Price Index). This is useful for comparing the rise and fall of wages from one year to another, but does not equal any actual "dollar" amounts. In other words in 1805 farm laborers earned about 75% of what farm laborers in 1850 earned (1850=100), pointing to rather stable farm labor wages throughout the period. Only a comparison of change between years or between jobs is significant (Clerks did not earn one-third of what farm laborers earned, rather clerk's wages rose dramatically through the first half of the 19th Century, while farm labor did not.)

Year	Farm Laborers	Skilled Workers	All Manual Laborers	Clerical Workers, etc.	All Workers
1781	61.12	48.30	50.19	22.24	39.24
1797	74.50	46.73	53.61	23.45	42.48
1805	74.51	42.55	51.73	20.82	40.64
1810	67.21	42.73	50.04	19.97	39.41
1815	75.51	52.18	58.15	25.49	46.71
1819	73.52	50.26	55.68	27.76	46.13

Source: Evans, Eric J. Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783-1870. 2^nd ed. London: Longman, 1996

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