1. Chapter 9: Labor Trends, Wages and Immigration
Guiding Question: How can workers best meet the challenges of a changing economy?
Ch9.1: How do economic trends affect workers?
Project:Is Immigration
Good or Bad for the US Economy

2. Objectives Describe how the labor force is tracked.
Analyze past and present trends in the labor force.
Summarize how the U.S. labor force is changing.
Explain trends in the wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers.

3. Tracking the Labor Force
Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects information on the labor force—
Labor force is all nonmilitary people who are employed or unemployed.
Unemployed only counts people actively looking for work
The unemployment rate is calculated as:
Total Unemployed * 100 = Unemployment Labor Force Rate
The BLS Labor Report is released the first Friday of every month
Non-Farm Payrolls (increase/decrease in # of jobs)
Unemployment Rate

4. Tracking the Labor Force
A person is considered employed if they are 16 years or older and meet at least one of the following requirements:
They worked at least one hour for pay in the past week
They worked 15 hours or more without pay in a family business
They held jobs but did not work due to illness, vacations, labor disputes, or bad weather.

5. Tracking the Labor Force: Does Total Population = Total Labor Force?
People are considered unemployed if they are either temporarily unemployed or if they are not working but are looking for jobs.
What are the parts that form the total U.S. population?
How does being unemployed differ from not being a part of the labor force?
Answers: 1. Military, Institutionalized, Labor Force, Non-labor. 2. Being outside the labor force means that people have given up looking for a job. It also includes full-time students, parents who raise kids at home, and retirees.

6. Trends in the Labor Force
The job market is constantly changing.
In the United States, began as an agricultural society
Innovation led to the industrial revolution that gave way to heavy industry and manufacturing in the early 1900s.
Electronics came next as a major industry in the 1950s
Computers and the knowledge economy opening new employment opportunities since the 1980s

7. Trends in the Labor Force
Since the 1970s, the US has shifted from a manufacturing/goods economy to a service economy.
Technology and innovation have decreased manufacturing jobs
Machines over man
Many manufacturing jobs have gone overseas through outsourcing and offshoring
Answers: About 90,000

8. The Changing Labor Force: The Increasing Value of Education
Build human capital by going to college, getting training
People with advanced degrees make more money than those with lesser degrees

9. The Changing Labor Force: Women in the Work Force
The number of women in the workforce has drastically changed in the last 50 years.
Many women started working during WWII and didn’t stop
More women went to college, increased human capital and entered the workforce.
The increase in service sector jobs also added to the increase of women in the workforce.
Answers: the 1970s
Which decade shows the largest increase in the percentage of women entering the labor force?

10. The Changing Labor Force: Temporary Workers
Another trend in the workforce is the increase in temporary workers, or contingent employment.
Reasons for this trend include:
Flexibility to adjust workers needed to produce output
Temporary workers are paid less and given fewer benefits.
It’s easier and less costly to fire temporary workers
Some workers prefer the flexibility of temporary work
Rising minimum wage
Increased supply of unskilled labor

11. The Changing Labor Force: Immigration and Foreign-Born Workers
Foreign-born workers have also influenced the labor force in recent years.
Immigration of skilled and unskilled workers has increased signficantly since the 1960s
There is both legal and illiegal immigration
Most foreign-born people in the United States are here legally

12. The Changing Labor Force: Immigration and Foreign-Born Workers
Guest workers are allowed to work for a company that can show they cannot meet their labor needs with native-born workers.
Most guest workers are unskilled laborers
Critics of guest workers say that they hold down the wages and lives of Americans.
Supporters claim immigrant workers do jobs that Americans are unwilling to do because the wages are low

13. Trends in Wages Paid to Workers:
Americans earn higher wages than people in many other countries
In recent years the growth in wages has been slowing down for manufacturing/goods
Technology/Innovation
Outsourcing
Deregulation
Wage growth has been
rising for
highly skilled labor
(value of education)
Answers: $ per week.

14. Review of Objectives Describe how the labor force is tracked.
Analyze past and present trends in the labor force.
Summarize how the U.S. labor force is changing.
Explain trends in the wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers.

15. Key Terms
labor force: all nonmilitary people who are employed or unemployed
outsourcing: the practice of contracting with another company to do a specific job that would otherwise be done by a company’s own workers
offshoring: the movement of some of a company’s operations to another country
learning effect: the theory that education increases efficiency of production and thus results in higher wages

16. Key Terms, cont.
screening effect: the theory that the completion of college indicates to employers that a job applicant is intelligent and hard-working
contingent employment: a temporary and part-time job
guest workers: members of the labor force from another country who are allowed to live and work in the United States only temporarily