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  • Adriene: Welcome to Crash Course Economics, I’m Adriene Hill,

  • Jacob: and I’m Jacob Clifford, and today were going to talk about labor markets, a pretty important topic.

  • Adriene: Unless you're independently wealthy, or fine with living in your parents basement,

  • you probably need to get a job. But how do you even get a job? And what kind of job should you get?

  • In a lot of ways, it comes down to supplying a skill that someone else demands.

  • [Theme Music]

  • This is Cristiano Ronaldo. He makes about $20 million a year playing soccer. Or football,

  • depending on where you live. Pretty much everybody would agree no one NEEDS that kind of money,

  • but does he deserve it? How do his employers, the Real Madrid Football Club, justify this huge salary?

  • Admittedly, the market for professional athletes is complex, but on some level, it’s supply and demand.

  • The supply of people that have the skills to be world class soccer players is low.

  • And the demand for world class soccer players is incredibly high.

  • Ronaldo might be willing to play for only 10 million dollars a year; it’s a lot of money.

  • He might even play for 5 million. And if he really truly loved the beautiful game,

  • he might do it for free. So why is he getting 20 million dollars?

  • This goes back to that really high demand. Having a superstar on your team generates

  • millions in ticket and merchandise sales. It might help you win some of the many cups

  • up for grabs in international football. So Real Madrid thought Ronaldo and his double

  • scissor move, were worth 20 million dollars, and Ronaldo agreed, so they have a contract.

  • These same ideas explain how wages are determined in nearly every labor market. Let’s go the Thought Bubble.

  • Jacob: Usually when Stan goes to the mall he's the buyer. He demands sunglasses and

  • giant pretzels and the businesses supply them.

  • But if he wants a job at the mall’s pretzel shop, the roles are reversed. Since he supplies

  • labor, he is now the seller and the pretzel shop owner becomes the buyer. A buyer of labor.

  • Now, that’s when wage negotiation ensues.

  • Stan could insist on a wage of $25 an hour for his pretzel skills, but the owner would

  • point out that they could easily hire other people for much less. The owner could offer

  • Stan a wage of only $1 per hour, but Stan would point out that he could easily get paid more at the Froyo shop.

  • In the end, they agree on a wage that makes each of them better off. The owner gets some

  • help around the store and Stan earns money so he can buy even cooler sunglasses.

  • Economists call this voluntary exchange.

  • The supply of labor depends on the number of people that are qualified to do the job.

  • Stan would love to get paid more, but since warming up pretzels doesn’t require extensive

  • skills, the supply of capable workers is high and consequently the wage is relatively low.

  • But that doesn’t mean that Stan is going to work for peanuts.

  • The wage offered has to cover his opportunity cost --

  • -- the value of his lost free time and the money he could be making doing something else.

  • The demand for labor depends on the demand for the products a business sells.

  • Economists call this derived demand. If pretzel demand is booming, then the store owners are

  • going to want more pretzel makers. If other stores also need more employees, demand for

  • workers will increase and drive up wages.

  • Thanks Thought Bubble. Supply and demand explains why wages are different for different professions.

  • Engineers are in high demand because they produce the products that many consumers want

  • and their supply is limited because the training for these jobs is pretty difficult.

  • Social workers and historians, aren’t paid as much, even though their work is important

  • because demand is relatively low and supply is relatively high. It’s not rocket science.

  • Adriene: Supply and demand explain a lot, but there are several reasons why wages in

  • a labor market don’t end up at a competitive equilibrium. Sometimes workers get paid less

  • not because they have different skill levels, but because of their race, ethnic origin,

  • sex, age, or other characteristics. This is called wage discrimination.

  • Wages might also be unfairly low when a labor market is a monopsony -- when there is only

  • one company hiring and workers are relatively immobile. When youre the only employer,

  • workers have to take what you offer, or theyre out of luck.

  • Take the NCAA, the organization that regulates college athletics in the US.

  • Many economists point out that high profile college athletes are generating millions of dollars for their

  • schools, but theyre forced to accept a very lowwageof a scholarship with free tuition.

  • Now sure, baseball and hockey players can skip straight to the pros, but the NFL prohibits

  • drafting football players until three years after high school. And NBA teams can’t draft

  • basketball players until theyre 19.

  • There are some situations where wages might actually be higher than market equilibrium.

  • For example, some employers might voluntarily offer higher than normal wages to increase

  • worker productivity and retention. Economists call this efficiency wages.

  • Henry Ford doubled the wages of assembly line workers in 1914 to keep them from seeking

  • jobs elsewhere. And this still goes on today. You may not be completely happy with

  • your job, but if it offers way more than what everyone else is paying, you're less likely to quit.

  • Unions can also drive up wages. A union is an organization that advances the collective

  • interest of employees and strives to improve working conditions and increase wages.

  • They do this through collective bargaining.

  • Representatives for the workers negotiate with employers and if their demands aren’t met,

  • workers go on strike, and stop production altogether. Although unions were once very

  • strong in the US, union membership and their strength has declined since the 1950s.

  • At their height, approximately 1 in 3 American workers were in a labor union. These days it's more like 1 in 9,

  • and the largest unions represent workers in the public sector, like teachers and firefighters.

  • Wages might also not be at equilibrium when there is a minimum wage -- basically a price

  • floor that prevents employers from paying workers below a specific amount.

  • Technically, in the US, minimum wage affects less than 3% of workers.

  • But the Brookings Institution estimates that an increase in the minimum wage likely wouldn’t

  • just impact that small slice of the labor market. It would also drive up the wages of

  • people who make just above the minimum wage. According to Brookings, that ripple effect

  • could raise the wages of nearly 30% of the workforce.

  • The debate over whether or not there should be a minimum wage, and how high that minimum

  • wage should be, gets pretty heated pretty fast.

  • Some classical economists argue against nearly all forms of government manipulation in competitive markets.

  • They say the minimum wage not only leads to unemployment, but it actually hurts the people it claims to help.

  • Their logic goes something like this: A minimum wage deters employers from hiring unskilled workers,

  • hiring only skilled or semi-skilled workers instead. These economists argue that minimum wage

  • does little or nothing to alleviate poverty, since instead of earning a minimum wage, unskilled

  • workers end up earning no wage at all.

  • The economists that support a minimum wage argue that real life labor markets aren’t as competitive

  • or transparent as classical economists suggest. They believe that employers have the upper hand

  • when it comes to negotiating wages and that individual workers lack bargaining power.

  • I’m not going to tell you what to think, but think about it like this: if a grocery

  • store wasn’t required to pay $7.25 an hour, and the grocery store was the only place hiring,

  • they could likely squeeze individual employees to accepting lower than market value. In this interpretation,

  • minimum wage isn’t interfering with competitive markets, as much as it’s correcting a market failure.

  • Remember anti-trust laws that prevent powerful monopolies from charging higher prices? Economists

  • that support minimum wage laws say they prevent employers from using their power to exploit workers.

  • The economists who are entirely opposed to minimum wage laws are losing the policy battle.

  • Most countries around the world have minimum wage laws, and many of those countries without

  • them have de facto minimum wages, set by collective bargaining agreements.

  • But even among economists who support some sort of minimum wage, there’s disagreement

  • over how high that minimum wage should be, and what raising the minimum wage might do to the economy.

  • Consider the U.S.: the current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. In 2014, 600 economists, including

  • 7 Nobel Prize winners signed a letter arguing that the minimum wage should be increased to $10.10 an hour.

  • They argued that raising the minimum wage could have a small benefit to the economy.

  • Workers, with their newly increased wages, would spend more. This would increase demand,

  • and perhaps help stimulate employment.

  • But some of those same economists balked when it came to the question of raising the minimum

  • wage to fifteen dollars an hour. They argue that even if a fifteen dollar an hour minimum

  • wage might make sense in an expensive city, like Los Angeles or New York, where the median

  • income is relatively high, it could have a significant negative effect on employment

  • in a city or town where incomes are lower.

  • If economics was a pure science, we could just test these ideas under controlled circumstances.

  • We could have one state set a significantly higher minimum wage than its neighbor and see what happens.

  • It turns out that happened in 1992, and economists David Card and Alan Krueger studied it.

  • New Jersey raised its minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.05 while Pennsylvania kept theirs at $4.25.

  • The economists surveyed large fast food chains along the state’s shared border

  • and found that workers didn’t get fired, in fact, employment in New Jersey actually increased.

  • But it’s far from settled. There have also been studies that indicate raising the minimum

  • wage DOES increase unemployment. A relatively recent survey of economists, by the University

  • of Chicago, found that a small majority think raising the minimum wage to nine dollars an

  • hour would make it noticeably harder for poor people to get work.

  • But, and this is where it gets interesting, a slim majority also thought the increase

  • would be worthwhile, because the benefits to people who could find jobs at nine dollars

  • an hour would outweigh the negative effect on overall employment.

  • Jacob: Very few economists argue a higher minimum wage will end poverty, but some argue

  • that it could reduce poverty. The minimum wage doesn’t exist in vacuum. Policies that

  • fight poverty should also focus on providing education and skills.

  • Adriene: Those skills are what the labor market values. It’s those skills that are in short

  • supply and high demand, and will command higher wages. So, while youre waiting for economists

  • to figure all this out, you might want to learn a new skill. Practice your double scissor,

  • and maybe take Ronaldo’s job.

  • Jacob: Thanks for watching Crash Course Economics, which is made with the help of all these awesome people.

  • You can help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever by supporting the show at Patreon.

  • Patreon is a voluntary subscription service where you can help support the show by giving a monthly contribution.

  • Thanks for watching! DFTBA!

Adriene: Welcome to Crash Course Economics, I’m Adriene Hill,

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勞動力市場和最低工資。經濟學速成班#28 (Labor Markets and Minimum Wage: Crash Course Economics #28)

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    Jane 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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