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The Demand for Labor

24 April, 2015 - 11:52

Learning Objectives

  • Apply the marginal decision rule to determine the quantity of labor that a firm in a perfectly competitive market will demand and illustrate this quantity graphically using the marginal revenue product and marginal factor cost curves.
  • Describe how to find the market demand curve for labor and discuss the factors that can causethe market demand curve for labor to shift

A firm must have labor to produce goods and services. But how much labor will the firm employ? A profit-maximizing firm will base its decision to hire additional units of labor on the marginal decision rule: If the extra output that is produced by hiring one more unit of labor adds more to total revenue than it adds to total cost, the firm will increase profit by increasing its use of labor. It will continue tohire more and more labor up to the point that the extra revenue generated by the additional labor no longer exceeds the extra cost of the labor.

For example, if a computer software company could increase its annual total revenue by $50,00 by hiring a programmer at a cost of $49,000 per year, the marginal decision rule says that it should do so. Since the programmer will add $49,000 to total cost and $50,000 to total revenue, hiring the programmer will increase the company’s profit by $1,000. If still another programmer would increase annual total revenue by $48,000 but would also add $49,000 to the firm’s total cost, that programmer should not be hired because he or she would add less to total revenue than to total cost and would reduce profit.