This is where pop-history terminology hits a snag. 'Serf' is typically used to refer to a vague assortment of social strata of peasant tenant farmers, from villagers and villeins to smallholders, cottagers and borderers. In the 11th Century, serf - servus - was actually used specifically to denote actual slaves.

Peasant tenant farmers weren't paid a wage because they weren't employees. Rather, for many tenants, labour was in fact how they paid their rent. Monastic records in particular are useful indicators of the types of periodic labour typically carried out as rents. This would allow farmers to sell surplus from their own fields at market for extra profit. This didn't apply to everyone. Especially in an urban environment, or within larger villages and market towns, a variety of craftsmen and even some varieties of agricultural labourer did work for a salary. Trained craftsmen such as blacksmiths, stone masons, carpenters, milliners were typically 'salaried' roles. Millers frequently claimed a 'multage' fee for milling grain, but in contexts where multage went to the landowner, millers could also be salaried employees.

By the early 14th Century, population pressure on the agricultural system had increasingly impacted on the means and terms of tenancies. The villein holdings most common at Domesday (typically a virgate of about 30 acres) were becoming increasingly replaced by smallholdings of 5-15 acres. Tenancy terms and service obligations were typically based on personal relationships and prone to renegotiation: although protected by common law and customary rights, tenant farmers could find the terms of their service obligations becoming increasingly steep.

The mass population loss of the Black Death allowed for a renegotiation across a variety of roles. For craftsmen, the greater demand for their labour allowed them to charge an increased salary in very literal terms. With reference to tenant peasantry, the sudden much greater availability of land allowed for the renegotiation of tenancies, for the holding of more land for lower service obligations which, in essence, equalled an increase in 'salary'.