Labor, Economy, and Society by Sallaz Jeffrey J.;

Author:Sallaz, Jeffrey J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press

Labor for Sale

Thus far we have examined labor markets from the perspective of potential purchasers of labor. Employers’ strategies for finding workers are strategic and patterned, drawing as they do upon heuristics, networks, and conventions (and even in the face of shifting regulatory environments). As we turn our attention to the other party to the exchange – employment-seekers – we find the same principle to hold. They, too, find and evaluate exchange partners in line with simplifying heuristics and with the help of networks of family, friends, and kin. And they, too, have been affected by the recent transformation from Fordist internal labor markets to post-Fordist contracting. The strategies by which sellers of labor find buyers, in short, are embedded in social, political, and cultural frameworks.

Émile Durkheim (1997 [1893]: 311) argued that a well-functioning society establishes channels through which each person can find an occupation matching his or her “abilities and tastes.” In a capitalist economy, every job will require certain abilities. This holds not only for high-skilled positions (such as a surgeon, for which a medical degree and extensive training are required) but even those that are commonly labeled low-skilled or unskilled (a fast-food worker, for instance, must be able to understand the local language and perform basic calculations). Insofar as these abilities are not natural, but the product of socialization and education, people will enter the labor market at different points in their life cycle and with variable amounts of leverage. Combine this with the fact that individuals will have different values and interests, along with varying opportunities and motivations for finding work, and we begin to see how complex is any given society’s “supply” of labor.

Sociological research has demonstrated that people find jobs in line with logics and strategies that reflect their position in various non-economic environs. First off, employment-seekers are not perfectly liquid commodities; they tend to be spatially embedded. They exhibit, that is, a certain degree of connectedness to their current place of residence, which in turn influences how willing they are to relocate to accept a job offer in an alternate locale. This can be seen whenever working parents turn down promotions that would entail transferring to another city; they may place greater value on making sure that their children do not have to switch schools or adjust to a new neighborhood.

The mobility of labor is also affected by the characteristics of a country’s housing system. Consider the mixture of rented versus owner-occupied housing. Workers who rent their dwellings can more easily pull up stakes and relocate in response to changing economic conditions, while homeowners are constrained in that they must first sell or rent out their homes. This difference is exacerbated during recessions, when home values decline at the same time that the unemployment rate rises. States that encourage home-ownership through measures such as tax breaks for mortgage interest thus unintentionally restrict the mobility of labor (Moretti 2012).

Even when people do relocate in search of work, their mobility patterns are influenced by their existing social relations.

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