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People with learning disabilities make good employees.

They have lower turnover rates and follow procedures that are better than Mcdonald's hires. McDonald's helped change some negative stereotypes about people with disabilities.

Market forces and political forces are working together.

Political forces to eliminate discrimination will be working against market forces to keep discrimination, so not discriminating can be costly to the firm.

The firm will have an incentive to use subterfuges if it saves money. The firm will appear to be complying with the law even when it isn't. A firm that doesn't hire an older person is called an exam ple.

The structure of the job makes it difficult or impossible for certain groups of individuals to succeed. The institutional structure is where institutional dis crimination comes from. Consider universities and colleges. During one's 20s and 30s, one must devote an enormous amount of effort to pursue a career in the academic market. The years when many women have major family responsibilities presents an obstacle for women to succeed. These obstacles for women to advance their careers could be reduced if academic institutions were different.

Many companies require peak time commitment when women are also facing peak family timeibilities. Women face significant institu tional discrimination.

Whether institutional discrimination is embedded in the firm's structure or not.

Women tend to be with their partners more than men in personal relationships according to sociologists. Women in two-parent relationships generally do more work around the house and take a greater responsibility for child rearing than men do.

The members of my class are asked if they expect their personal relationships to be equal. 80 percent of the women expect a fully equal relationship; 20 percent expect their partner's career to come first.

Eighty percent of the men expect their careers to come first, while 20 percent expect an equal relationship. I said that someone's expectations aren't going to be fulfilled. Most observers believe that institutional discrimination in relationships is significant.

The sociologists have found that institutional factors explain a portion of the lower pay that women receive but that other forms of workplace discrimination also explain a portion.

There is a question of whether prejudice should be allowed to affect hiring decisions. Our society has made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, reli gion, sex, age, disability, or national origin. The ethical belief in equal opportunity is the reason society has made it illegal.

Let's look at how labor markets developed after we consider how non economic forces can influence labor.

Labor markets developed in the 1700s and 1800s. The political and social rules of that time allowed the invisible hand to push wage rates down. Workweeks were long and the working conditions were bad. Laborers began to look at other ways of influencing their wages. Political power can be used to place legal restrictions on employers. The second way to organize was to unionize.

Let's look at each in a different way.

Laws play an important role in limiting what can and can't be done in the labor markets.

Extra pay must be given to employees who work more than the normal number of hours. One break every four hours is the law for the number and length of workers' breaks.

Child labor laws require that people be at least 16 years old to be hired.

Laws regulate the safety and health conditions under which a person can work.

Employers have to show cause to fire a worker. Sexual harassment is not allowed in the workplace.

The functioning of the labor market is dependent on these laws.

The labor market is explained in this chapter. I will try to answer that question in the last section.

Table 17-1 contains useful statistics about the labor market. Some of them might affect you. Consider the relative pay of jobs requiring a college degree compared to jobs requiring only a high school degree.

Jobs that require a col ege degree pay more than jobs that only have a high school degree. The income gap between the two groups has increased. The answer to the question of whether it's worthwhile to stay in college for another couple of years and get a degree is probably yes.

Consider the salaries of PhDs compared to the salaries of MBAs. Even though one can earn a PhD in many subjects besides philosophy, it is still considered a PhD if one has gone to graduate school after college for a number of years. PhDs' starting salaries are lower than those of masters of business administration and professionals with advanced degrees. PhDs may derive a "psychic income" from their work in addition to the amount of money they earn, as a result of their lower pay.