Labour economics is the subfield of economics concerned with the study of labour as an input to economic production. Broadly, it surveys labor markets and the ecomic decisions of agents participating in such markets. Topics of study include the labour supply of workers and how it is affected by variables such as age, education, gender and childbearing, as well as the labour demand by firms searching for different forms of labor as an input in the production of goods and services. In addition, labour economics studies phenomena such as unemployment, trade unions, discrimination, technological change, and public policies related to labor markets, such as unemployment benefits, pensions and health.

Labour economics can generally be seen as the application of microeconomic or macroeconomic techniques to the labour market. A general assumption in the microeconomic study of labor markets is that workers – suppliers of labor – make rational choices based on the information that they know regarding wage, desire to provide labour, and desire for leisure, to maximise utility over their lifetime by consuming economic goods, services and leisure. Conversely, economic firms – demanders of labor – seek to maximise profits by hiring these laborers.

The labour force (LF) is defined as the number of people of working age, who are either employed or actively looking for work (unemployed). The labour force participation rate (LFPR) is the number of people in the labour force divided by the size of the adult civilian noninstitutional population (or by the population of working age that is not institutionalized), LFPR = LF/Population.

The non-labour force includes those who are not looking for work, those who are institutionalized (such as in prisons or psychiatric wards), stay-at-home spouses, children not of working age, and those serving in the military. The unemployment level is defined as the labour force minus the number of people currently employed. The unemployment rate is defined as the level of unemployment divided by the labour force. The employment rate is defined as the number of people currently employed divided by the adult population (or by the population of working age). In these statistics, self-employed people are counted as employed.

The labour market has the ability to create a higher derivative efficiency of labour, especially on a national and international level, compared to simpler forms of labour distribution, leading to a higher financial GDP growth and output. An efficient labour market is important for the private sector as it drives up derivative income through the reduction of relative costs of labour. This presupposes that division of labour is used as a method to attain cost efficiency.

Variables like employment level, unemployment level, labour force, and unfilled vacancies are called stock variables because they measure a quantity at a point in time. They can be contrasted with flow variables which measure a quantity over a duration of time. Changes in the labour force are due to flow variables such as natural population growth, net immigration, new entrants, and retirements. Changes in unemployment depend on inflows (non-employed people starting to look for jobs and employed people who lose their jobs that are looking for new ones) and outflows (people who find new employment and people who stop looking for employment). When looking at the overall macroeconomy, several types of unemployment have been identified, which can be separated into two categories of natural and unnatural unemployment.

Natural Unemployment

Unnatural Unemployment