1. c. 4), also known as the Statute of Labourers 1562,[1] was an act of the Parliament of England, under Queen Elizabeth I, which sought to fix prices, impose maximum wages, restrict workers' freedom of movement and regulate training.

The causes of the measures were short-term labour shortages due to mortality from epidemic disease, as well as, inflation, poverty, and general social disorder.

Effectively, it transferred to the newly forming English state the functions previously held by the feudal craft guilds.

[1] The act controlled entry into the class of skilled workmen by providing a compulsory seven years' apprenticeship, reserved the superior trades for the sons of the better off, empowered justices to require unemployed artificers to work in husbandry, required permission for a workman to transfer from one employer to another and empowered justices to fix wage rates for virtually all classes of workmen.

This development was one of a series of initiatives that the British Parliament undertook to support the vastly changed economic climate of the nineteenth century.