An Analysis of the Effects of Agricultural Revolution on Unemployment, Inflation, and Fixed Incomes in Britain

Another reason the agricultural revolution affected the industrial revolution was introducing unemployment in Britain. By the year 1801 many cities population had increased due to the low need of workers in farming. The population of Manchester in 1750 was 18,000 and had increased to 90,000 by 1801; the population of Liverpool in the same time gap had increased from 22,000 to 80,000.

The reason for employment in agricultural jobs was the massive increase in productivity that required fewer workers and more grain per hectare of land. In 1750 a worker would be lucky to get 3,000 kg of grain from the 3 hectares he could work, due to increased innovations and ideas by the year 1790 one worker could work double the field and get 10,000 kg of grain.

This meant you would need fewer workers and those that didn't have work moved to cities in search of employment. The number of people that lived in the country moved from 80% to 50%. The more workers that went to the cities the less the cost of labor would be.

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This caused people working even harder for a very small amount of money, this forced the whole family to work, data shows that that the average man made 10-15 schillings per week, a woman made 6 and children made 1 per week in the early 1800's. When labor was so cheap and there were plenty of people willing to work, unemployment became an issue.

In certain trades the unemployment rate was 75%. Inflation ran rampant during and after the agricultural revolution, this was due to the fact that many of the farmers were enclosed or not needed, encouraged them to move to larger cities in the late 1760's. As more people entered large cities the velocity of money increased, but since there was an inelastic supply of food it didn't matter that the demand rose.

Now that there was such a large demand, suppliers could over price the food and that's exactly what they did, this indirectly increased wages which meant people had even more money to spend. This cycle continued steadily until the 20th century, the inflation rate grew 1-1.5% every year.

Although now a 1.5% increase in the inflation rate is considered normal, in the 16th century it was unusual due to the extreme monetary policies. The increase rate of inflation was good for Britain as it allowed their economy to grow and the value of their debt shrank.

The agricultural revolution also had an impact on fixed incomes; historians suggest that between 1700 and 1760 the average wage for a man was 15.00 schillings a day. The wage stayed steady for 60 years but from the years 1760 to 1830 it rose from 15.00 to 32.00 in the same time increment of 60 years.

This increase happened due to the inflation occurring in Britain at the time. As food became mass produced and many people became rich while others became poor people decided to charge extra since all this extra money people had. Some people didn't care about the rise of prices of goods and services since they had the money to spare, as they were making profit.

For the people affected by the unemployment due to the agricultural revolution this made life even harder as they couldn't afford many things such as housing or even food. As food costs went up, so did costs of many other goods and it became harder for the average Englishman to keep up.

Overall increasing income wasn't ideal for Britain since it pushed some people way ahead of others while most stayed back and for some their life became worse.

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