Reserve Army Of Labor
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Reserve army of labour is a concept in
Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
's critique of
political economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...
. It refers to the
unemployed Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (hu ...
and underemployed in
capitalist society Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a n ...
. It is synonymous with "industrial reserve army" or "relative surplus population", except that the unemployed can be defined as those actually looking for work and that the relative surplus population also includes people unable to work. The use of the word "army" refers to the workers being conscripted and regimented in the workplace in a
hierarchy A hierarchy (from Ancient Greek, Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy ...
under the
command Command may refer to: Computing * Command (computing), a statement in a computer language * command (Unix), a Unix command * COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS * Command key, a modifier key on A ...
or authority of the owners of
capital Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...
. Marx did not invent the term "reserve army of labour". It was already being used by
Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
The Condition of the Working Class in England ''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' () is an 1845 book by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, a study of the industrial working class in Victorian England. Engels' first book, it was originally written in German; an English t ...
''. What Marx did was theorize the reserve army of labour as a necessary part of the capitalist organization of work. Prior to what Marx regarded as the start of the capitalist era in human history (i.e. before the 16th century),
structural unemployment Structural unemployment is a form of involuntary unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills that workers in the economy can offer, and the skills demanded of workers by employers (also known as the skills gap). Structural unemployment is ...
on a mass scale rarely existed, other than that caused by natural disasters and wars. In ancient societies, all people who could work necessarily had to work, otherwise they would starve; and a slave or a serf by definition could not become "unemployed". There was normally very little possibility of "earning a crust" without working at all, and the usual attitude toward beggars and idlers was harsh. Children began to work at a very early age.


Marx's discussion of the concept

Although the idea of the industrial reserve army of labour is closely associated with Marx, it was already in circulation in the British labour movement by the 1830s. Engels discussed the reserve army of labour in his famous book ''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (1845) before Marx did. The first mention of the reserve army of labour in Marx's writing occurs in a manuscript he wrote in 1847, but did not publish: The idea of the labour force as an "army" occurs also in Part 1 of ''
The Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'' (), originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The ...
'', written by Marx and Engels in 1848: Marx introduces the concept of the reserve army of labour in chapter 25 of the first volume of '' Capital: Critique of Political Economy'', twenty years later in 1867, stating the following: His argument is that as
capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
develops, the
organic composition of capital The organic composition of capital (OCC) is a concept created by Karl Marx in his theory of capitalism, which was simultaneously his critique of the political economy of his time. It is derived from his more basic concepts of 'value composition ...
will increase, which means that the mass of
constant capital Constant or The Constant may refer to: Mathematics * Constant (mathematics), a non-varying value * Mathematical constant, a special number that arises naturally in mathematics, such as or Other concepts * Control variable or scientific co ...
grows faster than the mass of
variable capital Constant capital (c; ), is a concept created by Karl Marx and used in Marxian political economy. It refers to one of the forms of capital invested in production, which contrasts with variable capital (v; ). The distinction between constant an ...
. Fewer workers can produce all that is necessary for society's requirements. In addition, capital will become more concentrated and centralized in fewer hands. This being the absolute historical tendency under capitalism, part of the working population will tend to become surplus to the requirements of
capital accumulation Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form ...
over time. Paradoxically, the larger the wealth of society, the larger the industrial reserve army will become. One could add that the larger the wealth of society, the more people it can also support who do not work. However, as Marx develops the argument further it also becomes clear that depending on the state of the economy, the reserve army of labour will either expand or contract, alternately being absorbed or expelled from the employed workforce: Marx concludes as such: "Relative surplus-population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works". The availability of labour influences wage rates and the larger the unemployed workforce grows, the more this forces down wage rates; conversely, if there are plenty jobs available and unemployment is low, this tends to raise the average level of wages—in that case workers are able to change jobs rapidly to get better pay.


Composition of the relative surplus population

Marx discusses the army of labor and the reserve army in ''Capital'' Volume I, Chapter 25, Section IV. The army of labor consists in those
working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
people employed in average or better than average jobs. Not every one in the working class gets one of these jobs. There are then four other categories where members of the working class might find themselves: the stagnant pool, the floating reserves, the latent reserve and pauperdom. Finally, people may leave the army and the reserve army by turning to criminality, Marx refers to such people as
lumpenproletariat In Marxist philosophy, Marxist theory, the ''Lumpenproletariat'' (; ) is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society expl ...
. * The stagnant part consists of marginalised people with "extremely irregular employment". Stagnant pool jobs are characterized by below average pay, dangerous working conditions and they may be temporary. Those caught in the stagnant pool have jobs, so the modern definition of the employed would include both the army of labor plus the stagnant pool. However, they are constantly on the lookout for something better. * The modern unemployed would refer primarily to the floating reserve, people who used to have good jobs, but are now out of work. They certainly hope that their unemployment is temporary ("conjunctural unemployment"), but they are well aware that they could fall into the stagnant pool or the pauper class. * The latent part consists of that segment of the population not yet fully integrated into capitalist production. In Marx's day, he was referring to people living off of subsistence agriculture who were looking for monetary employment in industry. In modern times, people coming from slums in developing countries where they survive largely by non-monetary means, to developed cities where they work for pay might form the latent. Housewives who move from unpaid to paid employment for a business could also form a part of the latent reserve. They are not unemployed because they are not necessarily actively looking for a job, but if capital needs extra workers, it can pull them out of the latent reserve. In this sense, the latent forms a reservoir of potential workers for industries. * Pauperdom is where one might end up. The homeless is the modern term for paupers. Marx calls them people who cannot adapt to capital's never ending change. For Marx, "the sphere of pauperism", including those still able to work, orphans and pauper children and the "demoralised and ragged" or "unable to work". Marx then analyses the reserve army of labour in detail using data on
Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...
where he lived.


Criticism and debates


Economist criticisms

Some economists such as
Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "h ...
have taken issue with Marx's concept of the reserve army of labour. Samuelson argues that much Marxian literature assumes that the ''mere existence'' of the unemployed drives down wages, when in reality is dependent upon contingent factors. (Are the unemployed easily available as replacements? Is the mere threat of replacement sufficient to get workers to accept a wage cut or does the employer have to demonstrate this is not an empty threat?) Samuelson argues that if prices also fall with money wage, then this does not mean real wages will fall. Samuelson also argues that wages will fall only until there are no more unemployed to bid it down: the reserve army can reduce wages only by decreasing its size. Samuelson's concludes that to mean that while the unemployed can reduce wages, they are incapable of reducing them to anywhere near subsistence levels before the unemployed all become employed. A similar argument was made by
Murray Rothbard Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School,Ronald Hamowy, ed., 2008, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism', Cato Institute, Sage, , p. 62: "a leading economist of the Austri ...
, who argued that if the reserve army lower wages by being absorbed into the ranks of the employed, then eventually it will disappear and be incapable of being a threat (that also means that the risk of perpetual impoverishment is averted). Rothbard observes that this is supported by modern market economics, which holds that unemployment lowers wages and thus ultimately eliminates itself. Thus, Rothbard concludes that the reserve army would ultimately cease to be a threat. Rothbard also argues that industries can experience an increase in demand for other works thanks to increasing productivity caused by technology, which will then decrease unemployment due to a greater demand for workers caused by expanding production capability.


Immiseration

Some writers have interpreted Marx's argument to mean that an absolute immiseration of the working class would occur as the broad historical trend. Thus, the workers would become more and more impoverished and unemployment would constantly grow. This is no longer credible in the light of the facts because in various epochs and countries workers' living standards have indeed improved rather than declined. In some periods, unemployment had been reduced to a very small amount. In the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, about one in four workers became unemployed, but towards the end of the
post-war boom A post-war or postwar period is the interval immediately following the end of a war. The term usually refers to a varying period of time after World War II, which ended in 1945. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum, w ...
unemployment in richer countries reduced to a very low level. However, economic historian
Paul Bairoch Paul Bairoch (24 July 1930 in Antwerp – 12 February 1999 in Geneva) was a (in 1985 naturalised) Swiss economic historian of Belgian descent who specialized in urban history and historical demography. He published or co-authored more than two d ...
estimated in the mid-1980s that in Latin America, Africa and Asia "total inactivity" among the population was "on the order of 30-40% of potential working man-hours"—a situation without historical precedent, "except perhaps in the case of ancient Rome". Other writers, such as
Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; 5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter, was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He f ...
and
Roman Rosdolsky Roman Osipovich Rosdolsky (, ''Roman Osypovyč Rozdol's'kyj''; July 19, 1898 – October 20, 1967) was a prominent Ukrainian Marxian scholar, historian and political theorist. Rodolsky's book of 1968 entitled ''Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Mar ...
, argued that in truth Marx had no theory of an absolute immiseration of the working class; at most, one could say that the rich-poor gap continues to grow, i.e. the wealthy get wealthier much more than ordinary workers improve their living standards. In part, the level of unemployment also seems to be based on the balance of power between
social classes A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, ...
and state policy. Governments can allow unemployment to rise, but also implement job-creating policies, which makes unemployment levels partly a political result. If chapter 25 of Marx's ''
Capital, Volume I ''Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital'' () is the first of three treatises that make up , a critique of political economy by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. First published on ...
'' is read carefully, it is plain that Marx does not actually say what many critics accuse him of. Marx himself says that the "absolute general law of capitalist accumulation" is that the more that capital grows in size and value, the bigger the working class becomes and the larger the pauperized sections of the working class and the industrial reserve army become.''
Capital, Volume I ''Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital'' () is the first of three treatises that make up , a critique of political economy by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. First published on ...
'', Penguin ed., p. 798.
However, he does not say that the whole working class becomes pauperized, but rather that the part of it which is pauperized grows in size. He then carefully qualifies this argument by saying that the absolute general law is "like all other laws ..modified in its working by many circumstances". Next, Marx says that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low must "grow worse".''
Capital, Volume I ''Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital'' () is the first of three treatises that make up , a critique of political economy by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. First published on ...
'', Penguin ed., p. 799. emphasis added.
It is quite clear from the context though that by "worse" Marx does not primarily mean poverty. He means instead, as he says himself explicitly, that "all means of development of production undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become means of domination and exploitation of the producers". He is talking about "worse" in the sense of "inhuman", "more exploited" or "alienated".


Overpopulation

Another dispute concerns the notion of "
overpopulation Overpopulation or overabundance is a state in which the population of a species is larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migr ...
". In Marx's own time,
Thomas Robert Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book ''An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Mal ...
raised dire predictions that
population growth Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. The World population, global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.2 billion in 2025. Actual global human population growth amounts to aroun ...
enabled by capitalist wealth would exceed the
food supply Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, healthy food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender, ethnicity, or religion is another element of food protection. Similarly, househo ...
required to sustain that population. As noted, for Marx "overpopulation" was really more an ideologically loaded term or
social construct A social construct is any category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement. Socially constructed realities are contrasted with natural kinds, which exist independently of human behavior or beliefs. Simple examples of s ...
and Marxists have argued there is no real problem here as enough
food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for Nutrient, nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or Fungus, fungal origin and contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein (nutrient), proteins, vitamins, ...
can be produced for all; if there is a problem, it lies in the way that food is produced and distributed.


Consent

In the social welfare area, there are also perpetual disputes about the extent to which unemployment is voluntarily chosen by people, or involuntary, whether it is forced on people or whether it is their own choice. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment rose to 20–30% of the working population in many countries, people generally believed it was involuntary, but if unemployment levels are relatively low, the argument that unemployment is a matter of choice is more often heard.


Measurement

There are endless debates about the best way to measure unemployment, its costs and its effects and to what extent a degree of unemployment is inevitable in any country with a developed
labour market Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labou ...
. According to the
NAIRU The non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is a theoretical level of unemployment below which inflation would be expected to rise.
concept, price stability in market-based societies necessarily requires a certain amount of unemployment. One reason a reserve army of the unemployed exists in market economies, it is argued, is that if the level of unemployment is too low, it will stimulate price inflation. However, the validity of this argument depends also on state economic policy and on the ability of workers to raise their wages. If for example
trade unions A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
are legally blocked from organizing workers, then even if unemployment is relatively low, average wages can be kept low; the only way that individual workers have in that case to raise their income is to work more hours or work themselves up to better-paying jobs. Normally, the government measure of unemployment defines "unemployed" as "without any job, but actively looking for work". There are also people defined as "jobless", who want work yet are not, or no longer, actively looking for work because they are discouraged and so on. This official view of the matter is closely linked to the administration of
unemployment benefits Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work d ...
. To be entitled for an unemployment benefit, it is a requirement that the beneficiary is actively looking for work.


Hidden unemployment

There are also many controversies about hidden unemployment. Hidden unemployment means that people are not counted or considered as unemployed, although in reality they are unemployed. For example, young people will stay in the family home, in schooling, or in some
make-work A make-work job is a job that is created and maintained at a cost not offset by the job’s fulfilment. Usually having little or no immediate financial benefit, such roles can be said to exist for other economic or social-political reasons, for ex ...
scheme because they can not find a paid job. People might also have a job, but they might be underemployed because they cannot get more working hours or they cannot get a job for which they are qualified. People might also drop out of the official labour force because they are discouraged and no longer actively looking for work; they are no longer counted as unemployed, although they are. Governments can also subsidize employment of people who would otherwise be unemployed, or put people on benefits even although they could be working. It may be that workers are hired, but that they do nothing while at work. On the one side, governments often try to make unemployment seem as low as possible because that is politically desirable. On the other side, governments also often provide "broader" and "narrower" measures of unemployment. For example, the United States
Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the government of the United States, U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics, labor economics and ...
provides six measures of labor underutilization (U-1 through U-6). The U-3 rate is the "official" unemployment rate.


Global reserve army of labour

Marx was writing in the mid-19th century, and his discussion of unemployment may therefore be in part out of date, especially if one considers only particular developed countries. However, his analysis may continue to be quite valid if considered globally. The ILO reports that the proportion of jobless has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the
2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
. In 2007, the ILO standard global unemployment measure stood at 169.7 million. In 2012, the ILO global unemployment rate reached 5.9% of the civilian labour force (195.4 million, or a net 25.7 million more), 0.5 percentage points higher than the 5.4% rate before the
2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
. The official global unemployment rate was expected to have risen to 6% of the civilian labour force in 2013. Over 30 million jobs were still needed to return total employment to the level that prevailed before the
2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
. It was expected in 2013 that globally about 205 million people would be unemployed in 2014 and 214 million in 2018. However, the official total of the unemployed was subsequently (in 2017) forecast to be just over 201 million persons in that year and with an additional rise of 2.7 million expected in 2018. The official world total of unemployed in the labour force is approximately equal to the total number of employed workers in the United States, Canada and Mexico put together. The official unemployment figures do not include jobless people who have dropped out of the labour force altogether because they can not find work as they include only those actually looking for work. The global unemployment rate is strongly influenced by population growth; the more population, the more unemployed and employed in absolute numbers. However, the proportion of jobless people now rises every year and is expected to continue rising for quite some time. Among the world's unemployed, the ILO estimates that roughly half the global total are young people aged 15 to 24. In the rich countries, it often does not matter so much if young people are unemployed at that age, but in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America where most of the unemployed youths are it is often a much more serious problem.


Modern academic usage

In recent years, there has been a growing use in
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
and
anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...
theory of the concept of "the precariat" to describe a growing reliance on temporary, part-time workers with precarious status who share aspects of the proletariat and the reserve army of labor. Precarious workers do work part-time or full-time in temporary jobs, but they cannot really earn enough to live on and depend partly on friends or family, or on state benefits, to survive. Typically, they do not become truly "unemployed", but they do not have a decent job to go to either. Although non-employed people who are unable or uninterested in performing legal paid work are not considered among the "unemployed", the concept of "conjunctural unemployment" is used in economics nowadays. Economists often distinguish between short-term "frictional" or "cyclical" unemployment and longer-term "structural unemployment". Sometimes there is a shortterm mismatch between the demand and supply of labour, at other times there is much less total demand for labour than supply for a long time. If there is no possibility for getting a job at all in the foreseeable future, many younger people decide to emigrate to a place where they can find work.


See also

*
Efficiency wage In labor economics, an efficiency wage is a wage paid in excess of the market-clearing wage to increase the labor productivity of workers.Mankiw, Gregory N. & Taylor, Mark P. (2008), ''Macroeconomics'' (European edition), pp. 181–182 Specifica ...
*
Full employment Full employment is an economic situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may ...
*
Guaranteed minimum income Guaranteed minimum income (GMI), also called minimum income (or mincome for short), is a social-welfare spending, welfare system that guarantees all citizens or families an income sufficient to live on, provided that certain eligibility conditions ...
*
Involuntary unemployment Involuntary unemployment occurs when a person is unemployed despite being willing to work at the prevailing wage. It is distinguished from voluntary unemployment, where a person chooses not to work because their reservation wage is higher than the ...
*
Iron law of wages The iron law of wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. The theory was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-n ...
*
Phillips curve The Phillips curve is an economic model, named after Bill Phillips, that correlates reduced unemployment with increasing wages in an economy. While Phillips did not directly link employment and inflation, this was a trivial deduction from his ...
and the
Natural rate of unemployment The natural rate of unemployment is the name that was given to a key concept in the study of economic activity. Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps, tackling this 'human' problem in the 1960s, both received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Scien ...
* Shapiro–Stiglitz theory *
Job guarantee A job guarantee is an economic policy proposal that aims to create full employment and price stability by having the state promise to hire unemployed workers as an employer of last resort (ELR). It aims to provide a sustainable solution to inf ...
and associated concept of "buffer stock" (
NAIRU The non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is a theoretical level of unemployment below which inflation would be expected to rise.
, NAIBER) *
Labour supply In Mainstream economics, mainstream economic theories, the labour supply is the total hours (adjusted for intensity of effort) that workers wish to work at a given real wage rate. It is frequently represented graphically by a labour supply curve, ...
*
Labour power Labour power (; ) is the capacity to work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do the work, i.e. labour power, and the physical act of working, i.e. labour. ...
*
Overproduction In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply, or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment. T ...
*
Unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work du ...
*
Wage slavery Wage slavery is a term used to criticize exploitation of labour by business, by keeping wages low or stagnant in order to maximize profits. The situation of wage slavery can be loosely defined as a person's dependence on wages (or a salary) f ...
*
Working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...


References


External links


ILO data on global unemployment




{{DEFAULTSORT:Reserve Army Of Labour Marxian economics Precarious work Unemployment Economic problems Waste of resources