Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-60.

• Position: Review

Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-60, written by Robert A. Margo, is available from the University of Chicago Press for $28.00. This is the latest volume in the NBER series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development.

Research by economists and economic historians has greatly expanded our knowledge of labor markets and real wages in the United States since the Civil War, but the period from 1820 to 1860 has been studied far less. Margo fills this gap by collecting and analyzing the payroll records of civilians hired by the U.S. Army and information from the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Censuses of Social Statistics. He constructs new wage series for three occupational groups--common laborers, artisans, and white-collar workers--in each of the four major census regions--the Northeast, the Midwest, the South Atlantic...