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The career paths wage earners at the Grand Bazar of Lyon in the 19th and 20th centuries were profoundly affected by instability that contradicts the usual opposition of the employee category to factory workers in historical studies. Firstly, employment conditions and wages offered by the Grand Bazar are not are better than those of the working class.Secondly, the positions successively or even simultaneously occupied by these wage earners throughout their career, those of the unskilled labor market common to all activity sectors, do not enable f the wage earners of the Grand Bazar to be identified as employees and confirm that, since the 19th century, at least a portion of factory worker positions and employee positions are held by the same people.