Seasonal variation of hours worked in home-based industrial production: Evidence from Sweden 1912

Abstract

This study investigates patterns of seasonal variation in hours worked by women employed in home-based industrial production in Sweden in the early 20th century. Previous studies often describe workers in this type of production as the most flexible segment of industrial workers, and highly dependent on seasonal fluctuations in supply and demand. However, few have studied this empirically. This study relies on data from interviews with home-based workers. Principal component analysis is used to identify seasonal patterns and OLS regressions to identify the factors driving these fluctuations. The results show surprisingly stable patterns in hours worked, most women worked 8–10 hours per day all year. Thus, while home-based workers were flexible in the sense that they all worked on piece-work contracts and provided their own means of production and place of work, their work was not essentially irregular or largely fluctuating by supply- or demand-driven seasonal variations.