Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets
What is Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets?
Written by J. Mance Gordon
Updated at April 23rd, 2024
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What is Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets?
There are probably more examples of perfectly competitive labor markets than perfectly competitive product markets, but that doesn’t mean that all labor markets are competitive.
When a job applicant is bargaining with an employer for a position, the applicant is often at a disadvantage—needing the job more than the employer needs that particular applicant.
To give workers more power, the U.S. government has passed, in response to years of labor protests, a number of laws to create a more equal balance of power between workers and employers. These laws include some of the following:
- Setting minimum hourly wages
- Setting maximum hours of work (at least before employers pay overtime rates)
- Prohibiting child labor
- Regulating health and safety conditions in the workplace
- Preventing discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and age
- Requiring employers to provide family leave
- Requiring employers to give advance notice of layoffs
- Covering workers with unemployment insurance
- Setting a limit on the number of immigrant workers from other countries
Related Topics
- Labor Economics
-
Labor Market Equilibrium
- Labor Market
- Labor Market Equilibrium
- Labor Market Efficiency
- Price, Supply, and Demand in the Labor Market
- Equilibrium Wage
- Shifts in the Demand for Labor
- What Causes Shifts in the Supply Labor?
- How Technology affects Demand for Labor?
- Minimum Wage as a Price Floor in the Labor Market
- What is the First Rule of Labor Markets?
- Labor Demand in Perfectly Competitive Markets
- Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets
- Monopsony
- Oligopsony
- Labor Market Power of Employers
- What is the marginal Cost of Labor?
- Labor Market Power of Employees
- What is a Bilateral Monopoly in a Labor Market?
- Wage Elasticity of Labor Supply
- Equilibrium in Supply and Demand in Labor Markets
- Shifts in Supply and Demand in Labor Markets