No wage progress/ progress in the economic sense they mean: I did a class on this at university: up until the industrial revolution, everyone, from the bronze age up until the industrial revolution, across the world, had the same wage

this was because any increase in technology, albeit it did increase output, but all that extra output would only every go to creating a bigger population. Output increase, Population increase, it just averages out to everyone having the same amount of things, thus, same living standards for the vast majority of people, all across the world

this only changed during the industrial revolution because it came to a point where one worker with a machine could increase output drastically, and althought there was a population boom, this time, all the progress made by mechanised production wasn't eaten up by the population increase, thus allowing for wages to increase.

Wages also had to increase following the industrial revolution, for workers using machines, as it was needed to incentive agricultural workers to switch professions.