Editing Labour economics (section)

=== Discrimination and inequality ===
[[Economic inequality|Inequality]] and [[discrimination]] in the workplace can have many effects on workers.

In the context of labour economics, inequality is usually referring to the unequal distribution of earning between households.<ref name=":04"/> Inequality is commonly measured by economists using the [[Gini coefficient]]. This coefficient does not have a concrete meaning but is more used as a way to compare inequality across regions. The higher the Gini coefficient is calculated to be the larger inequality exists in a region. Over time, inequality has, on average, been increasing. This is due to numerous factors including labour supply and demand shifts as well as institutional changes in the labour market. On the shifts in labour supply and demand, factors include demand for [[Skilled worker|skilled workers]] going up more than the supply of skilled workers and relative to unskilled workers as well as technological changes that increase productivity; all of these things cause wages to go up for skilled labour while unskilled worker wages stay the same or decline. As for the institutional changes, a decrease in union power and a declining real minimum wage, which both reduce unskilled workers wages, and tax cuts for the wealthy all increase the inequality gap between groups of earners.

As for discrimination, it is the difference in pay that can be attributed to the demographic differences between people, such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc, even though these factors do not affect the productivity of the worker.<ref name=":04" /> Many regions and countries have enacted government policies to combat discrimination, including discrimination in the workplace. Discrimination can be modelled and measured in numerous ways. The [[Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition|Oaxaca decomposition]] is a common method to calculate the amount of discrimination that exists when wages differ between groups of people. This decomposition aims to calculate the difference in wages that occurs because of differences in skills versus the returns to those skills.<ref name=":04" /> A way of modelling discrimination in the workplace when dealing with wages are [[Gary Becker]]'s taste models. Using taste models, employer discrimination can be thought of as the employer not hiring the minority worker because of their perceived cost of hiring that worker is higher than that of the cost of hiring a non-minority worker, which causes less hiring of the minority. Another taste model is for employee discrimination, which does not cause a decline in the hiring of minorities, but instead causes a more segregated [[workforce]] because the prejudiced worker feels that they should be paid more to work next to the worker they are prejudiced against or that they are not paid an equal amount as the worker they are prejudiced against. One more taste model involves customer discrimination, whereby the employers themselves are not prejudiced but believe that their customers might be, so therefore the employer is less likely to hire the minority worker if they are going to interact with customers that are prejudiced. There are many other taste models other than these that Gary Becker has made to explain discrimination that causes differences in hiring in wages in the labour market.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/economicsofdiscr0000beck|title=The economics of discrimination|last=Becker|first=Gary S.|author-link=Gary Becker|date=1971|publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]|isbn=0-226-04115-8|edition=2d|location=Chicago|oclc=173468|url-access=registration}}</ref><!-- Section needs to be dramatically reworked before unhiding, per [[WP:CSECTION]] --><!--== Criticisms ==
Many sociologists, political economists, and [[heterodox economics|heterodox economists]] claim that labour economics tends to lose sight of the complexity of individual employment decisions.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Jacob Mincer: A Founding Father of Modern Labor Economics - Oxford Scholarship|last=Teixeira|first=Pedro N.|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199211319.001.0001|year=2007|isbn=9780199211319|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]}}</ref> These decisions, particularly on the supply side, are often loaded with considerable [[emotional baggage]] and a purely numerical analysis can miss important dimensions of the process, such as social benefits of a high income or wage rate regardless of the marginal utility from increased consumption or specific economic goals.

From the perspective of [[mainstream economics]], neoclassical models are not meant to serve as a full description of the psychological and subjective factors that go into a given individual's employment relations, but as a useful approximation of human behaviour in the aggregate, which can be fleshed out further by the use of concepts such as [[information asymmetry]], [[transaction cost]]s, [[contract theory]] etc.

Also missing from most labour market analyses is the role of [[feminist economics#Unpaid work|unpaid labour]] such as unpaid internships where workers with little or no experience are allowed to work a job without pay so that they can gain experience in a particular [[profession]]. Even though this type of labour is unpaid it can nevertheless play an important part in society if not abused by employers. The most dramatic example is child raising. However, over the past 25 years an increasing literature, usually designated as the [[Family economics|economics of the family]], has sought to study within household decision making, including joint labour supply, fertility, child-raising, as well as other areas of what is generally referred to as home production.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Putting the family in economics |url=https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/putting-the-family-in-economics/ |access-date=2024-03-14 |website=University Affairs |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Wage slavery===
{{main article|Wage slavery}}
{{further|Economic exploitation|Contemporary slavery}}

The labour market, as institutionalised under today's market economic systems, has been criticised,<ref>{{cite book|title=Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy|last=Ellerman|first=David P.|author-link=David Ellerman|year=1992|isbn=1557863091|publisher=[[Wiley-Blackwell|Blackwell]]}}</ref> especially by both mainstream [[Socialism|socialists]] and [[anarcho-syndicalism|anarcho-syndicalists]],<ref name="English Working Class p. 599">{{Harvnb|Thompson|1966|p=599}}.</ref><ref name="English Working Class p. 912">{{Harvnb|Thompson|1966|p=912}}.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Ostergaard|first=Geoffrey|author-link=Geoffrey Ostergaard|year=1997|title=The Tradition of Workers' Control|location=London|publisher=[[Freedom Press]]|isbn=978-0-900384-91-2|page=133}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor|last=Lazonick|first=William|year=1990|page=37|isbn=9780674154162|publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674154162|access-date=January 26, 2023}}</ref> who utilise the term [[wage slavery]]<ref name="merriam-webster.com">{{cite dictionary |title= wage slave |url= http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wage%20slave |dictionary= [[Merriam Webster|merriam-webster.com]] |access-date= 4 March 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite dictionary |title= wage slave |url= http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wage%20slave |dictionary= [[dictionary.com]] |access-date= 4 March 2013 }}</ref> as a [[pejorative]] for [[wage labour]]. Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and [[slavery]]. [[Cicero]] is also known to have suggested such parallels.<ref>"...vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.''" – [[De Officiis]] [http://www.constitution.org/rom/de_officiis.htm]''</ref>

According to [[Noam Chomsky]], analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] era. In his 1791 book ''On the Limits of State Action'', classical [[liberalism|liberal]] thinker [[Wilhelm von Humboldt]] explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness" and so when the labourer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is."<ref>{{cite book|title=Year 501: The Conquest Continues|url=http://www.rosariodawson101.com/books/chomsky/Noam%20Chomsky%20-%205%20books.pdf|access-date=January 26, 2023|last=Chomsky|first=Noam|author-link=Noam Chomsky|year=1993|page=19|isbn=9781895431629|publisher=Black Rose Books}}</ref> Both the [[Milgram experiment|Milgram]] and [[Stanford experiment]]s have been found useful in the psychological study of wage-based workplace relations.<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Social Exchange Theory of Emotions|last1=Lawler|first1=Edward J.|last2=Thye|first2=Shane R.|series=Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research |pages=295–320 |title=Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions|editor1-last=Stets|editor1-first=Jan E.|editor2-last=Turner|editor2-first=Jonathan H.|year=2006|chapter-url=https://hdl.handle.net/handle/1813/76104|access-date=January 26, 2023|doi=10.1007/978-0-387-30715-2_14|isbn=978-0-387-30713-8|location=[[Boston]]|publisher=[[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]]|hdl=1813/76104 }}.</ref>

The [[Americans|American]] [[philosopher]] [[John Dewey]] posited that until "[[neo-feudalism|industrial feudalism]]" is replaced by "industrial [[democracy]]", politics will be "the shadow cast on society by big business".<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Dewey|first=John|author-link=John Dewey|title=The Need for a New Party|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/104638/the-need-new-party|access-date=January 26, 2023|date=March 18, 1931|quote=As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance|magazine=[[The New Republic]]|url-access=limited}}</ref> [[Thomas Ferguson (academic)|Thomas Ferguson]] has postulated in his [[investment theory of party competition]] that the undemocratic nature of economic institutions under capitalism causes elections to become occasions when blocs of investors coalesce and compete to control the state.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Ferguson|first1=Thomas|author-link=Thomas Ferguson (academic)|title=Golden Rule : The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems|url=https://archive.org/details/goldenruleinvest00ferg|url-access=registration|date=1995|publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]|location=[[Chicago]]|isbn=0226243176|access-date=January 26, 2023}}</ref>

As per anthropologist [[David Graeber]], the earliest wage labour contracts we know about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses.) Such arrangements, according to Graeber, were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the [[United States]] or [[Brazil]]. C. L. R. James argued that most of the techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations.<ref>{{cite book|title=Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology|last=Graeber|first=David|author-link=David Graeber|url=https://www.eleuthera.it/files/materiali/David_Graeber_Fragments_%20Anarchist_Anthropology.pdf|access-date=January 26, 2023|year=2004|publisher=[[Prickly Paradigm Press]]|location=[[Chicago]]|page=37|isbn=0-9728196-4-9|lccn=2004090746}}</ref>

Additionally, [[Marxism|Marxists]] posit that labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour,<ref>{{cite book|last=Marx|first=Karl|author-link=Karl Marx|year=1990|title=Capital: A Critique of Political Economy|volume=1|translator-last=Fowkes|translator-first=Ben|page=1006|url=https://www.surplusvalue.org.au/Marxism/Capital%20-%20Vol.%201%20Penguin.pdf|access-date=January 26, 2023|quote=[L]abour-power, a commodity sold by the worker himself.|publisher=[[Penguin Books]]}}</ref> provides an absolutely fundamental point of attack against [[capitalism]].<ref>Another one, of course, being the capitalists' alleged theft from workers via [[surplus-value]].</ref> "It can be persuasively argued", noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatisation of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it."<ref>{{cite journal|title=That a Worker's Labour Cannot Be a Commodity|last=Nelson|first=John O.|journal=[[Philosophy (journal)|Philosophy]]|volume=40|number=272|date=April 1995|pages=157–165|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|doi=10.1017/S0031819100065359 |jstor=3751199|s2cid=171054136 }}</ref>

-->