We have really complex employment structures today. Looking at the census tables of where I live (Ontario, Canada) - the more popular industries are: Construction, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Trade. Some types of jobs transcend industries. Administrative jobs exist in practically every business - from primary schools to hospitals.
I am interested to know what people did for a living in Rome (c. 100 AD). I pick that time and city because it was quite populated with a million people living in it. With so many people, there had to be more jobs, and more complexity in the industries - I imagine.
What did they do? What kind of jobs were there? How did they job structures compared with ours today? For example, majority of modern jobs in North America are service-producing instead of goods-producing. How was the services industry in Rome back then? Today, trade is the most popular service industry. But how did trade work back then in terms of job structure and industry complexity?
Honestly, I have no specific questions because I don't know enough about the topic to ask a specific question. I am hoping the answers in this thread or any book recommendations can enlighten me.
Well, just about any job you can think of. It was, as you say, a city of a million people, which requires an enormous amount of labor just to stay operable. You need tavern owners, builders, carpenters, potters, tanners, weavers, as well as sausage sellers, longshoremen, porters and firefighters. I suppose the big difference between a modern city is that there would be a much higher proportion involved in secondary production (basically primary=extraction of resources, secondary=finishing of resources, tertiary=service) because they weren't a post industrial economy.
It is a bit difficult to say whether there was a primary industry in Rome because Rome did not develop to its size based on comparative advantage in a particular economic sector (like, say, Detroit with cars) but because of the imperial flow of resources.