Concept Labor Economics - Economist

Labor Economics is concerned with many of the important decisions facing individuals at various different points in their lives, despite some of these decisions being made when the person is not actively involved in the labor market. For example, it has helped us to gain a far better understanding of the factors influencing how long to stay in full-time education and when is the best time to retire.

Labor Economics

Modern labor economics typically adopts a Neo-classical approach, in which agents are assumed to be maximizing (utility for workers and profits for firms). As such, the subject has been heavily influenced by the Chicago School of economists, with standard microeconomics techniques applied to not only traditional labor market issues, such as the behavior of trade unions and the labor demand decisions of firms but also to areas that were not previously thought to have an explicit economic dimension. These include discrimination, migration and a range of household decisions including the allocation of time to different activities, fertility and divorce.

Labor economics is a good option for students wishing to make use of many of the skills they will have acquired from previous courses in economics. This is because it contains elements of both micro and macroeconomics and is underpinned by a mixture of theoretical and empirical analysis. Given the type of questions that it seeks to answer, it is particularly useful for students interested in careers in a range of government departments as well as in other public sector and international organisations.