IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6686.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

One Way the Demand for Labor May Adapt to the Availability of Labor

Author

Listed:
  • Duleep, Harriet

    (College of William and Mary)

Abstract

This paper presents and tests a model that may partially explain why the demand for labor adapts to the availability of labor. In particular, I postulate that the cost of hiring declines with increases in the amount of labor available. The cost of hiring would decrease with a growth in available labor for two reasons: (1) individuals seeking employment would be coming to employers instead of the latter seeking them out and (2) the larger set of potential employees would increase the probability of employers finding individuals suitable for unfilled jobs. Moreover, individuals seeking employment may engender employers to think of new ways in which labor can be used. An increase in the number of entrants to the labor force would lower the cost of hiring and increase employment demand at any given wage rate. Hence, a change in the labor force – such as the addition of women or immigrants – does not increase unemployment as much as is predicted for current workers because demand for labor increases as the cost of hiring decreases. The paper may provide some insight into the relationship between the size of the labor force and employment demand as recently highlighted by Stock and Watson in their examination of the 2007-2009 recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Duleep, Harriet, 2012. "One Way the Demand for Labor May Adapt to the Availability of Labor," IZA Discussion Papers 6686, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6686
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6686.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Duleep, Harriet, 2013. "U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads," IZA Discussion Papers 7136, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Harriet Orcutt Duleep, 2013. "U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads," Working Papers 130, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor demand; labor supply; cost of hiring;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6686. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.