The Historical Job Ads Team at the University of Graz hosted the workshop “Historical Labor Markets in Text: Computational and Historical Perspectives on Labor Market Evolution” on 24–25 April 2026.
The workshop brought together researchers from economic history, labour economics, sociology, and digital humanities working with historical textual sources such as job advertisements, biographical dictionaries, and digitized newspapers. Presentations and discussions focused on the analysis of historical labour markets, occupational change, skill demand, gender inequality, and computational approaches to textual data.
We were delighted to welcome participants from several European universities and research institutions and would like to thank all speakers and participants for the stimulating discussions and inspiring exchange. The workshop concluded with an informal afternoon at a traditional Styrian Buschenschank, which provided a particularly enjoyable setting for continuing conversations beyond the formal sessions.
Given the many shared research interests that emerged during the workshop, we hope this meeting will be the beginning of a continuing exchange and are looking forward to follow-up workshops in the future.
The detailed workshop programme and abstracts can be found in the section Research Results.