how was everyone employed in the city of Paris before electricity was discovered?

how was everyone just about employed in the city of paris before electricity was discovered? what jobs did they all have? and is there a good book on this subject? last would cities still have lots of jobs in an agrarian economy or post carbon oil world with no electricity.

Why specifically the city of Paris? I would say that you could look at relatively any pre-electric city and get an idea of what things looked like.

Les Miserables comes to mind as a good literary view into what Paris looked like before electricity came about.

In terms of jobs, in a pre-electrical city: you're going to have a LOT fewer electricians.

You had __________men delivering everyday:

milk
ice
coal
feed for the cows and horses


For every widget produced, you were doing it with mostly manual labor so manufacturing employed more people

Everything just took more people time to produce.

You had a LOT of the food grown IN the city (or suburbs).

Wesley Johnson : We are blest with an incredible number of French Authors, from that period who all had immense grand ideas, and used the lives of the little people to tell their
stories, Guy De Maupassent, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas father and son, Rousseau, Honere`de Balzac, even Jules Verne, Casanova, and de Sade ! You could spend a life
time from just before the french revolution when they were fighting against the English and out numbered them 3 to 1, the French revolution, Napoleon !

The Story le Miserable` ,The Phantom of the Opera, both as plot lines are dependent on the hundreds of years that while Paris was growing up as a walled city the ground under the
Parisians feet was Quarried and tunneled !

Can you give us a reason why you are looking into that time and place ! Big AL

the reason i want to figure out what jobs they had is to know weather cities are a good place to live after the post peak oil transition. also i watched the power of community and it talked about people moving in the city from the country due to economic opportunities. also i herd of people loosing their land during the great depression. can cohousing on a lot of properties coexist with small and mid sized towns without creating job loss or to much competition?

I don't believe that looking at the past to predict the future would work in such a case.

Paris had existed for a thousand years without electricity. With each passing year, conditions improved.
The residents had evolved lifestyles and jobs that kept most clothed, housed and fed.

In a case like peak oil collapse, it will be the opposite. People are used to comfort, and the 'easy life'.
I believe that it will be a slow melt down rather than a big bang.
People will quit their jobs simply because the cannot afford to commute any longer.
A new life style will evolve in the inner cities, but it will take years to develop.
It will probably take a full generation to make this transition into a viable process.
Just like in cities of yore, there will be those that make a comfortable living, and there will be the 'have-nots'.

Once again, people will lose their land and homes.
Those with a mortgage will be the first to fall. Just like in the Great Depression.

Those who already have 'street smarts' will be the least hurt by such an event.
There may not be jobs, as we now know them. No fixed wages or salary, nor fixed hours.
You will need to hustle to find opportunities. An odd job here, another one there.
Once again, the ability to work with your hands will ensure survival, whether in the city or on the farm.