[2]: 122 The term was originally coined by the Japanese demographic historian Akira Hayami to describe Japan during the Tokugawa era.
The 1500s (16th century) saw the revolution of print, which boosted education and knowledge sharing among locations, and which was an automation-revolution, based on transmissions, albeit not-yet motorized.
[7] Eventually, some achievements of industry and agriculture, as well as the decisions made by households, helped to increase the supply, as well as the demand for goods.
However, according to historians Gregory Clark and Ysbrand Van Der Werf, there has been no information found to suggest an increase in work days, in the time period between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century.
[13] In contrast, other estimates found an average of 250-260 working days a year for labourers in fifteenth-century Europe, lower than at any subsequent point until the second half of the twentieth century.
Between 1300 and 1800, the period directly preceding and following the proposed Industrious Revolution, the estimated amount of lumber sawed increased about eighty percent.
Unlike the lumber sawing business, this industry shows "clear downward movement"[15] in threshing rates, after which there are no longer any trends.
[15] This information would help to disprove the idea of an Industrious Revolution, since, as it has been put forth, there is no universal trend displaying an increase of work habits.
While direct information on the number of days worked per year in pre modern times is scant, indirect estimates of annual labour inputs support the idea of increased industriousness in England.
Robert Allen and Jacob Weisdorf inferred the length of the historical working year by dividing the costs of supporting an average family by the daily wage rate at the time.
In rural areas, however, increased industriousness resulted from workers' attempts to maintain their standards of living in the face of falling real wages.
However the authors abstain from endorsing the aforementioned theory that this was caused by a voluntary desire to buy more goods, suggesting structural changes in employment (on annual vs. daily basis), demise of alternatives to wage labour (payment in kind and/or boarding), rising number of dependants to support and shifts in bargaining power as possible alternative explanations.