Aspects of labour market failure

I have been researching some video clips for a presentation on labour market failure at the Tutor2u revision workshops - here are a couple of good ones. This BBC report looks into exploitation of migrant workers by a gangmaster business which has had its licence revolked. And Hugh Pym reports on the rising level of relative poverty in the UK despite sixteen years of economic growth. Finally this clip comes a series of progammes from BBC South East on ‘Breadline Britain’.

Revision: Labour Market Failure

Markets fail when they do not reach an efficient and/or equitable outcome from society’s point of view. At AS level, you will have studied many examples of possible market failure ranging from the provision of public and merit goods through to externalities and the welfare consequences of monopoly power in markets.  At A2 level, you are asked to explore some issues relating to labour market failure. This revision note flags up a few of them:

Revision note:
Revision_Labour_Market_Failure.pdf

Unemployment - In Charts

The labour market provides a rich stream of information about what is happening in the real economy. It is often said that the number of people of work is a lagging indicator of the economic cycle - is that true this time around? Unemployment is still falling on both of the main published measures. And the number of people in work has never been higher. Thus far the signs from the labour market do not suggest an economy teetering on the brink of a slowdown or, worse still, a full-blown recession. My new ‘labour market in charts’ provides a set of fourteen up to the minute charts and is streamed here. The presentation can also be downloaded from the Tutor2u web site, it might be a useful resource if you are teaching aspects of unemployment at AS and A2 level.