Labour Markets Flashcards
What are the factors of production?
Land Labour (biggest cost) Capital
What is Labour?
human effort contributing to production
Where in the economy is labour crucial?
Service sector, personal service
Trends in labour market
Rising employment for women and gap between skilled and unskilled labour increasing
What is specialisation?
Concentrating in a particular field to make most of skills
What are the benefits of specialisation?
Produce more output increases economy grows standards of living increase Less costs/more efficient
What is Division of Labour?
Specialise in one part of production process
Negatives of division of labour?
Get bored, may make mistakes/careless, costs of rehiring and training
How to combat negatives of division of labour?
Management or mechanism process so workers get more interesting jobs
What kind of economy has large service sector and why?
Mature economy (developed country), manufacturing jobs decline so service sector create jobs
Benefits of increasing efficiency
Reduce production costs, Less resources used (including time), Value added may increase, output per head increases
Negatives of unemployment
Less spending so business struggle and cut more labour
Long-term bad for work habits and loss of skills
Skill shortages?
Skill shortages (people lack skills but are available to work) mean businesses struggle, training is expensive (but apprenticeships subsidised), unskilled cheap and in high supply
What types of labour are paid more?
Scarce, different skills (plastic sugeon), dangerous (scuba diver) and less pleasant (bin clearers)
