There’s the point made that Joseph, and likely Jesus, were according to the Greek version of the gospels “techton”(?) which actually translates as day labourer or construction worker. One theory is that Tiberias was being built just down the road, a fancy new city for one of the Herods, and provided work for a large number of locals.
The concept of a “steady job” seems to have evolved over time, for various definitions of “steady”. The workers in the parables seem to have been hired for the day (or less) for their work (possibly at the local Home Depot?), so that concept was not unknown.
The question becomes then, when did the work become regular and reliable enough that a person could rely on it for a season, a year, several years, but not be a live-in servant? Presumably some medieval trades fit that description for continuity. The non-slaves building the pyramids would be a combination of stoneworkers extracting the limestone blocks year around, and the labourers who showed up to work when the yearly floods made their farming work irrelevant - although many calculations suggest while floating the blocks across from the other side of the Nile may have been seasonal, when the floods lapped at the feet of the Sphinx, to accomplish the bigger pyramids logistics suggest a year round building process. (And I doubt the stonemasons were live-in servants although they likey had a village nearby like the one at valley of the Kings a millennium later). Possibly dockworkers in a place like Rome (Ostia) would have a steady job, the only question how often they were paid workers as opposed to slaves?
The other question would be when money became common for payment, rather than an allotment of grain, although again parables suggest cash payment and a cash economy (30 pieces of silver? Tax collectors? Render unto Caesar?) was normal for even working class by the time of the Roman Empire. The Temple in Jerusalem expected payment in specific coins from the general public, hence the moneychangers at the temple.
Ancient Egyptian scribes would copy out a satirical work called “The Instruction of Dua-Khety” or “The Satire of the Trades“ which listed lots of Egyptian jobs, and has references to workers receiving pay. Specifically the arrow maker who has to pay for a donkey out of his own wages.
The point of the text is to encourage scribes to become scribes, that is to continue with their studies including copying out the work itself. And that the other possible options are all horrible.
A translation is available here. And includes reference to carpenters, bricklayers, barbers, jewelers, bakers and many more, with the implication that these are permanent roles and not things done by peasants outside of planting or harvest.
Roman legionaries in the imperial era. Paid a set salary (in fact, it’s the origin of the world), with semi-standardized bonuses (when a new emperor took over etc.), benefits (citizenship at the end of service if you didn’t have it), retirement plans (land grants). Read a book about common people in the Roman society recently, the author made a point that their situation was wildly different from most ordinary free people who lived in a precarious state of near-constant underemployment.
Remember that before the Industrial Revolution 90% or better of the population were farmers of one kind or another: yeomen, tenet farmers, sharecroppers, servants and slaves. If anything, farmers paid rent to the landlord rather than receiving wages. Wage labor was the exception, not the rule. Soldiers might have received a stipend because that was the most practical way of rewarding them for their service beyond their daily victualing, but as mentioned upthread they were not “employees” in the sense of being free to leave if they wanted. Wage labor requires both a cash economy and a substantial trade and manufacturing sector.
I don’t recall reading about coins or other “cash” in the earliest Egyptian (or Summerian) civilizations. Presumably they mean trade goods such as food, and where they require valuables, gold or silver but not specific currency. Generally what I find searching for it, coins were first minted around 700BC. Wages would be a logical outcome of a cash economy and demand for services by those who could not either need or afford to support the household (servants or slaves) to be dedicated to a job full time. Regardless, it seems by the time of the Roman Empire, cash transactions were sufficiently part of the economy that phenomenon like beggars existed, cash payment for a day’s work existed, etc.
In one of Jesus’s parables the marketplace was the hiring location for day workers, and there was perhaps a concept of hourly pay:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a [[denarius]] for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am [[generosity|generous]]?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
It’s the English equivalent of the Greco-Roman “hour” of the day, which is reckoned to start at daybreak. Daybreak was conventionally defined as six hours after midnight.
So, for instance, Verse 3 reads “…nine o’clock…” in modern reader-friendly translations, but the original Greek and translations that prefer direct translations say “third hour” (tritēn hōran). The third hour after dawn would have been the 9th hour of the Roman civil day (which started at midnight), so directly equivalent to “9 o’clock”.
The King James version, less adapted to modern times:
>Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. **6 **And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle **7 **They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.
We seem to still have the phrase “the eleventh hour” indicating almost done.
Probably so. Even if the rank and file were conscripts, the officers were likely in it for a steady paycheck.
ETA. As opposed to something like the Viking or Mongol model where a soldier would keep a part of what they plundered rather than getting a steady paycheck.
During the miners’ strike against Margaret Thatcher, my dad reminded me why the union was so militant. Despite the obvious continuous employment, a mineworker’s option of working was tenuous day to day, not a steady job. The boss could tell someone “you’re not working this week” if they had pissed him off, or even if their wife had cross words with the boss’s wife at the market the other day. As How Green Was My Valley dramatized, cutbacks were also common. Petty management and poor working conditions resulted in nationalization when Labour got in.
Of course, today we have Uber and similar gig workers where “contractoor” is a euphimism for “at will employment”.
It hardly seems different from 2,000 years ago in the vineyards.