Most people are familiar with the image of a prosperous community centered around industry slowly descending into poverty as the factory's production are outsourced and moved away to cheaper centers of production. Likewise, with the boom-and-bust cycle being a fact of life of the market system, the idea of a lot of people being unemployed at once in an economy isn't too alien to most people.

However, did such situations ever arise in pre-industrial societies? Was there ever a case where enough workers lived in an area suffering a bad enough economic climate that unemployment because a noticeable issue? How about unemployment of the peasants? Could things like poor harvests affect the amount of people out of work / looking for work?