ABSTRACT
Private employment agents—men and women who derive an income by acting as brokers between employers and people who seek employment— are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. They are an example of a highly specialized division of labor—itself a recent phenomenon. Private employment agents can exist only while labor is a commodity subject to free pricing within a market economy and when the laborer is free to leave his employment or geographic area in pursuit of better wages and/or working conditions. While we tend to take such an environment for granted, it evolved no earlier than the end of the eighteenth century. This is not to suggest the total absence of labor mobility prior to the late 1700s. Labor mobility was, however, understood and dealt with as a political-economic problem and not as a virtue to be encouraged by allowing private men to traffic and profit in it.
