Wage labor is an economic institution in which a worker sells their labor to an employer in exchange for a money wage, distinct from unfree labor institutions such as slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude or debt bondage, in which compulsion rather than a voluntary contractual wage relationship binds the worker. Wage labor became the dominant form of work organization with the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe from the eighteenth century onward, replacing earlier agrarian and craft-based labor institutions in much of the world, and remains the primary basis of most formal employment relationships globally today. Sociologists have long studied wage labor's institutional effects on class formation and workplace organization, including the trade unions that arose to negotiate its terms.
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