More important perhaps, from the perspective of free American workers, was the change in relative wages among various “grades” or skill levels. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, as throughout most of the colonial period, the premiums paid for artisan skills in the United States were typically less than those paid in England. “Premiums” reflect the extra amounts paid to skilled labor above wages paid to unskilled labor. Skilled American workers typically earned more than skilled British workers, but the skilled-to-unskilled U. S. wage ratio was lower than the skilled-to-unskilled English wage ratio. However, the evidence in Table 11.5 shows that this was not uniformly true. The lower ratio is most clearly evident in the machine makers skill category when compared with common or farm labor.
The relatively low premium paid for skilled labor in early nineteenth-century America resulted primarily from the greater pulling power of agricultural expansion on unskilled labor and the higher proportion of skilled British immigrants entering the United States before mass immigration began (see Habakkuk 1962).
By the 1820s, however, this skill premium began to advance. For example, Table 11.6 shows the ratio of machinists’ daily wages to those of common laborers in urban Massachusetts during the antebellum period. See Economic Insight 11.1 on page 195 to explore questions raised by this trend. Although these widening pay differentials may have varied somewhat regionally, they generally represented a broad pattern of advance (for further evidence on this point see Williamson and Lindert 1980).1
World History
