As a pastural people that often undertook rides to the neighbouring states and communities, the Jurchen employed slaves (criminals or war captives) as an important source of their economical output. During the course of the sinification of the Jurchen the system of slavery was given up, especially in the southern parts of the Jin empire where the Jurchen nobility sold their slaves, and where it was unpossible to further exert a slavery system within an environment that traditionally was characterized by a free peasantry. The second reason for the abolishment of slavery system was that the Jurchen imperium, that had expanded very quickly within only a decade, had to be governed by a more sophisticated administration system that ensured a larger state income, while the slavery system only served the interests of the single Jurchen warriors. Marxist historians describe this social change as the development from the "slaveholder society" to the "feudal society" whose representative was imperial China.
The northern part of China, especially the Central Plain (Zhongyuan
Peasants had to pay a poll tax (per cow, not per human) after the foundation of the empire (niutoushui
A further tax source was trade, and most goods were taxed with a kind of value added tax of three percent and later more. The Central Capital (modern Beijing) had three large markets where products from all over the counry were sold. Waterways were an important traffic tool, and Emperor Jin Shizong had reconstruced some old canals to the Central Capital. With the neighbouring states, like the Southern Song, merchants traded through border markets (quechang 榷場). The valued import goods were tea and coin metal from Song China, and horses from the Tangut empire of Western Xia.
Iron casting and producing was an important industrial field of the Jin empire, and people were stimulated to dig iron, silver and gold ores, but were not allowed to cast metal tools by themselves. The state had the monopoly of iron processing, and the most famous iron products of the Jin empire were made from "blue" refined iron (qingbintie
At the begin of the Jin empire, only old coins of the Liao and Song realms were used as currency, but from the 1150es on paper money (jiaochao 交鈔) was introduced, and the Jin emperors had their own coins cast, like the Zhenglong yuanbao
Through the conclusion of peace with the Song empire the economy of Jin became more prosperous, but soon, under the pressure of the first Mongolian raids, the economic situation of northern China again became stressed. Further, three large inundations of the Yellow River at the end of the 12th century devastated large areas in modern Shandong province. Third, to finance the military activities against the Tatars and the Mongols, the Jin court issued more paper currency and thereby fastened the tendency of inflation. From 1200 on the court began to install military agro-colonies (tuntian