Talk:Labor intensity

I moved the following comment from the article to the talk page:

I think could be useful checking page 10 of Advanced Macroeconomics of David Romer.

The comment was made on 15:50, 20 August 2005 by 201.1.172.8.

70.172.212.184 22:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, what is labor intensity?

"The term "labor intensive" can be used when proposing the amount of work that is assigned to each worker/employee (labor), emphasizing on the skill involved in the respective line of work." -- I have never heard the term used in this sense. Nor would it make sense if used this way.

"In labour-intensive industries, the wages of workers take up a large proportion of the total production costs." -- Not necessarily, as low wages in a given industry contribute to labor intensity in that industry, relative to others; what ultimately determines labor intensity is the amount of labor per unit production. If one assumes high wage inflexibility, as one can often do, yes, this wage-labor intensity relationship will follow; but if one can force more production per given unit time, or even lower wages (say, from outsourcing to low-wage areas), a relative increase in labor intensity can *decrease* the wage-per-unit-production ratio.

I suspect folks may be mixing up the concepts of "labor intensity" and "productivity." Doprendek (talk) 00:46, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy...

I just wrote, "what ultimately determines labor intensity is the amount of labor per unit production..." Following the "capital intensity" link, I think this de facto puts me on one side of the Cambridge capital controversy, not to mention any number of Marxism vs. economic orthodoxy arguments... but, hey, I think what I removed was on the other... I think the little bit left is NPV, and one can follow the capital intensity link. 66.91.66.128 (talk) 00:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]