How apprenticeship shaped the English economy Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill, Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy. Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprenticeship worked and how it contributed to the transformation of England. Wallis details the activities of apprentices
