Worldbuilding Economics

[Devor]

I'm trying to figure out my world's economy right now.

This is where I am:

Agricultural Sector: 33%
Other Primary Sector (mining, timber, oil): 20%
Secondary Sector (factories and cottage industry): 20%
Tertiary Sector (services, like healthcare, education, tourism): 12%
Population NOT IN Workforce: 15%

For comparison, a modern economy has about 3% primary, 25% secondary, and 70%+ tertiary. Although that's misleading because most of the tertiary jobs are in the city, so most non-city areas are dominated by one of the other two sectors. A medieval country might have 80% primary, 15% secondary, and 5% tertiary. But most of the numbers I can find leave out the last number, Pop NOT IN Workforce.

The basic strength of an economy comes down to how many people one farmer can feed. Let's call this number X. If 1 copper penny is a week's worth of grain, then the average wage is going to be X copper pennies per week. If the country can feed itself with 10% farming, the average wage would be 10 copper coins. 50% farming = 2 copper coins per week. 20% farming = 5 coins each week. 33% agriculture, like I have above, leads to wages of 3 copper per week.

But is all of this kind of right or not or what? And I kind of took a stab at the Pop not in Workforce number, and I suspect it might be low? Could someone just kind of critique this analysis?

 

[skip.knox]

Well, you knew I couldn't keep quiet. <g>

Is your economy pre-industrial? I'm guessing it is, but can you give a rough time frame for comparison? If it's 1700 or later I'm going to bow out, but I'll make a couple of comments here on the assumption it's earlier.

So "workforce" is an anachronism. It's more or less meaningless in a medieval agricultural economy because no one was earning a wage--and wages are pretty much the dividing line between being in and out of the workforce.

Let's wonder a moment what not being in the "workforce" might mean in a medieval economy. As you noted, there's a fundamental divide between city and country here, to the extent that we really start to talk about two economies. Those who had their own farms, whether freeholders or peasants, had employment I suppose, even when not actively working. Let's call them all farmers, regardless of legal status. Farmers hired hands, which mostly were seasonal workers. These workers would move with the crops, even as seasonal workers do today, but their position was always precarious. They could be put out of a job by war or crop failures, or simply by a superabundance of labor. It's impossible to guess at a percentage, which in any case could fluctuate dramatically from one year to the next. In modern parlance we might call them the chronically underemployed (though some could make a living for many years). Also in this pocket would be cottagers (an English term, but I think they existed elsewhere). These were people who had a cottage (usually rented) but no land. They were a kind of local workforce, always available, always dismissable.

There were other workers in the countryside. Shepherds. Woodcutters. Cobblers. Itinerant workers of various kinds. We can reckon all those as being in the workforce. But what are we to make of the nobility and their dependents? Is a count in the workforce? This segues over into government in all its forms and manifestations. Shall we count mercenaries as part of the workforce? <g>

Employment had different dynamics in the towns. Would you count the clergy as being in the workforce? The reformers sure didn't! Still less were the monks so considered, for all that they made lovely liquor. The group that all would count as employed were those who belonged to guilds, including their apprentices and journeymen. But there were plenty of non-guild workers. The unehrliche Leute, a nice German phrase that translates poorly as the "dishonorable people." Fishmongers, executioners, peddlers of all sorts, rag-collectors, bathhouse keepers (in some towns), and so on. All trades that had some kind of social stigma attached. Some of these were employed while others, such as Romani, were not.

By the 16thc we get some decent figures as to who was on the dole in certain towns. Record keeping could be spotty, but at least there are figures. Can't help you with specifics, but there are ton of studies on the poor in the late MA and early modern period. More detail that you would want, I'm sure.

Anyway, I gotta ask: why do you want to know? How would different ratios affect story telling?

 

[Devor]

Population Not In Workforce usually refers to the elderly, people in school, and stay-at-home parents. The reason I'm confused is because, well, didn't those people work at the time? If you're 11, and you go to school, but then harvest comes and you spend your summer in the fields, you're in Agriculture, not Out of the Workforce, right? How detached were these groups historically from the traditional workforce?

Anyway, I gotta ask: why do you want to know? How would different ratios affect story telling?

These numbers represent the economy of the setting - how much the nation produces, how much things cost, and how wealthy people were. For me, it's not very hard to get a handle on how tweaking the numbers even a little reshapes the entire setting. In terms of finding the numbers for a setting I already have, though, it helps in ironing out some of the rougher edges of what people do, as well as being consistent and realistic about prices, population sizes, and generally making sure there's enough happening in the greater setting to justify the level of development.

 

[skip.knox]

I understand what it usually refers to. I was trying to point out that these reference points are nearly nonsensical when applied to a pre-industrial economy. It's like talking about white collar versus blue collar workings in the time of Charlemagne. It's the wrong vocabulary.

I also should point out that there was not "the economy" in most traditional society. There were many economies, overlapping and interweaving. The urban-rural divide (which ran far deeper than it does in modern times) is but one example. To give just one other one: fishing. All along the southern Baltic (which I know best, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it applied elsewhere), men worked the fishing fleet for part of the year, then went back to their farms for another part. As you pointed out, the very young and the very old might also participate in those economies, performing vital tasks yet without pay.

But I'm no help with those ratios, so I'll hush now.