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Labour economics, or labor economics, seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labour. Labour is a commodity that is supplied by labourers , usually in exchange for a wage paid by demanding firms.
Labour power (German: Arbeitskraft; French: force de travail) is the capacity to do work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, i.e. labour power, and the physical act of working, i.e. labour. [1]
"The labor problem" is the economics term widely used toward the turn of the 20th century with various applications. [1] It has been defined in many ways, such as "the problem of improving the conditions of employment of the wage-earning classes."
The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour. Thus the labour of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master's profit. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.
The primary argument is that the economic gains accruing from the division of labour far outweigh the costs, thus developing on the thesis that division of labour leads to cost efficiencies. It is argued that it is fully possible to achieve balanced human development within capitalism and alienation is downplayed as mere romantic fiction.
The lump of labor fallacy is also known as the lump of jobs fallacy, fallacy of labour scarcity, fixed pie fallacy, and the zero-sum fallacy—due to its ties to zero-sum games. The term "fixed pie fallacy" is also used more generally to refer to the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. [ 4 ]
The labor force is the actual number of people available for work and is the sum of the employed and the unemployed. The U.S. labor force reached a record high of 168.7 million civilians in September 2024. [1] In February 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, there were 164.6 million civilians in the labor force. [2]
Labour economics – Study of the markets for wage labour; List of countries by labor force; List of countries by sector composition of the labor force; Proletariat – Class of wage-earners; Unemployment – People without work and actively seeking work; Women in the workforce – All women who perform some kind of job