Talk:Reserve army of labour

Wow - I am doing new pages patrol, finding mostly stubs, and along comes this fully formed and referenced article :). Thue | talk 21:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Immigration?

I wonder if increased immigration has to do with the reserve army of labour.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070819/ap_on_bi_ge/immigration_4

Darth Sidious 05:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

In belated answer to your question, one cannot say empirically that an inflow of immigrants always contributes to more unemployment, or that it always creates less unemployment. It depends very much on (1) the state the economy is in, (2) in what sectors the immigrants actually work, (3) how immigrants are treated or perceived, (4) on the demographic structure of the country, and (5) on demographic changes. When economic activity is growing robustly, a shortage of labour develops and immigrants can fill the gap. In addition, labour markets are often segmented, and there may be oversupply of labour in some areas, and undersupply in others. Much then depends on where exactly the immigrants actually go to work. Immigrants quite often work in jobs which the local people do not want to work in; if the immigrants were not there, there would be a shortage of labour. When economic activity declines, then it is more likely that immigrants would contribute to extra unemployment. But the outcome is not so clearcut. Firstly, immigrant labour also contributes to economic growth, and extra market demand. Secondly, it may be that although the number of immigrants is rising, the number of emigrants is rising at the same time - many new people enter the country to live, but many others are leaving. Hence, it is important to consider the net inflow (or outflow) of immigrants. Thirdly, in "greying" countries, a large number of residents are retired, and a longterm shortage of young workers can emerge. It is often difficult to prove definitely what exactly the economic effect is of immigration, since so many different causal factors play a role. Immigrants have a variety of motives for moving to another country. They could be refugees or asylum seekers. But the vast majority move, because they either have a job lined up, or because they think they have a good chance of finding employment. Migrating is not something that is done lightly, and usually it is done by people who think they are realistically capable of making a new life somewhere else - the vast majority are typically workers aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s, i.e. people of working age in the prime of life, with or without dependents, often skilled/educated workers. If immigrants are treated badly in the country they move to, this can obviously affect their ability to find work and keep it. User:Jurriaan 13 february 2012 20:21 (UTC)

I have updated the global unemployment section using a 2013 ILO report.Jurriaan (talk) 14:00, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Beware of Bob Rayner's "editing"

The scam editor Bob Rayner User:Bobrayner specializes in cutting large bits out of articles that he doesn't like, for no reason at all or for some spurious reason. He doesn't understand anything about the subjectmatter. The article then has to be reset to what is was before his vandalism. This article is still being worked on from time to time and Rayner's destructive habits are unwanted here. Jurriaan (talk) 19:23, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Scum editor Bob Rayner is at it again, and I have reverted his edits again (since he obviously did not read the source I cited).Jurriaan (talk) 15:10, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Please stop your personal attacks, original research, and synthesis. Stop it. bobrayner (talk) 15:30, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

a global reserve army

A word of caution -- ILO's definition of unemployment does not include all working age individuals who are without work (as many assume)/ No, in order to be considered unemployed by the ILO, you must satisfy strict set of criteria (eg. those who look for work but dont find and stop searching are not counted).

See http://monthlyreview.org/2004/04/01/disposable-workers-todays-reserve-army-of-labor/

There are many people that don’t show up on most surveys of unemployed or underemployed. For example, the approximately 2 million U.S. prisoners are for the most part removed from productive employment. There is also evidence that some discouraged job seekers have gained disability pensions as a result of enhanced benefits and liberalized qualifications for programs for the disabled. Some workers permanently stop looking for work when faced with long periods of bleak job prospects. Downsizing companies encourage other workers to retire with the offer of early pensions or generous severance payments—over 21,000 workers at Verizon, 10 percent of its labor force, recently took financial inducements to retire (New York Times, January 11, 2004). They retire early and may receive private pensions, as well as Social Security retirement payments after reaching age 62, and therefore are not even considered “discouraged” workers. This group is not evaluated by most surveys, but an indication of its magnitude is that the proportion of U.S. men from 25 to 54 years old that say they are retired and not looking for work rose, from less than 6 percent in 1991 to over 10 percent in 2001 (Issues in Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Summary 03-03 September 2003). Germany, in an effort to reduce the embarrassingly high number of officially unemployed has made a novel offer to workers 58 and older. In return for signing a statement stating that they are no longer looking for work, they can continue to receive payments equal to unemployment benefits until eligible for a pension (Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2003). That’s quite an innovative technique for reducing the official unemployment level and making the economy look better! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 (talk) 06:56, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Controversies section

The whole section is just argumentative original research/synthesis. To make it worse, sentences like "If chapter 25 of Marx's Capital, Volume I is read carefully" is unencyclopedic. The question is if somebody with good access to sources are willing to fix this. It would be a shame to just remove the whole section just because it isn't up to scratch. --OpenFuture (talk) 13:00, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I've done a lot of work on labour statistics and labour history, and I think it's an excellent and useful short summary of the topic. If there are criticisms, let's hear what they precisely, rather than vague, waffly comments such as that the text isn't "up to scratch". This sort of thing is not helpful for the purpose of improving the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.148.154.58 (talk) 20:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)