In the fantasy community, when building a world (which is often analogous to medieval Europe) a common impediment arises. When populating this world, determining the occupations of its denizens is challenging. Those who wish to be faithful to historical examples have few resources from which to draw. The most frequently (and often only) cited reference is Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John Ross.
Mr. Ross provides a table of occupations with their incidence rate based on population size. For example, for every 1400 persons there will be one spice merchant and for every 350 persons there would be one barber. However this information is drawn from one source: a reference to the 1292 tax roll of Paris found in the end notes of Life in a Medieval City by Frances and Joseph Gies. The Gieses had pulled this information from a French manuscript by Hercule Géraud Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel. These occupations were based upon surnames in the tax record. Thus John Smith was a blacksmith, etc.. I’m sure by now you can see the blatant pitfalls. A concise rebuttal to Ross’s calculations can be found in an old blog post by Bob Traynor who brings attention to many of the errors and wrong assumptions drawn by these sources.
Here’s the interesting thing; there are scores of advice blogs for games masters, fantasy authors, and world-creators that link back to this one source. Numerous spreadsheets and online calculators use this data as their primary reference. For over a decade Ross’s article has been the go-to source with little to no alternatives.
This leads me to my question for you r/AskHistorians; what sources can be used to determine the prevalence of a given occupation in a typical medieval setting? What occupations would be a near certainty in a settlement of say 1500 people? What about 15,000?
Please, help bolster an entire community of writers and game masters.
TL;DR – Many medieval world-builders draw demographic data from one questionable source, where should we look instead (e.g. how many butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers are there in a medieval settlement?)
A good resource for medieval and early modern occupational structure is the Cambridge Population Group's 'The occupational structure of Britain 1379-1911', a wide-ranging project that is still ongoing if I am not mistaken. Some datasets were also released, though I am not certain about accesibility. Another very interesting resource is the Women's Work Project, for 1500 -1700, also based on English sources (this time incidental recordings of women's work in unrelated sources). This also still ongoing, and very interesting, because we know very little of women's occupations and actual waged work on a large-scale basis. A similar kind of work, focused on women's occupations in Germany (Wurttemberg), but again for 1550 - 1750 (roughly), is Sheilagh Ogilvie's A Bitter Living.
There is not that much on medieval work per say, because the sources that can be used for detailed demographic reconstitution are very much lacking for most of Europe, apart from England, France, and some other selected communities.
You can also try to plow through Wrigley and Schofield's English Population Reconstitution, but that again starts with the 1580s.
There are certainly more resources, and more up-to-date projects especially now with the recent rise of digital humanities, but nothing comes to mind immediately. If possible, I will return with more info later on today. Generally though, a lot of things tend to start with the late 16th century, owing to source reliability.
You'd need something similar to a census or a population enumeration to be able to crossref settlement population size and occupational structure, in theory.
Something that should be clarified about Ross' article, for those that haven't read it--it's explicitly for the purpose of "good-enough" worldbuilding for tabletop gaming. It's not intended to be an accurate source (and it isn't). In the FAQ, the author says:
While the ranges possible with the recommended die-rolls will always include something plausible in a general kind of way, it's not meant to model any particular real-world locale or specific medieval period