The secondary labor market is the labor

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

consisting of high- turnover, low-pay, and usually

part-time Part-time can refer to: * Part-time job, a job that has fewer hours a week than a full-time job * Part-time student, a student, usually in higher education, who takes fewer course credits than a full-time student * Part Time Part Time (styliz ...

temporary work Temporary work or temporary employment (also called gigs) refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes ...

. Sometimes, secondary jobs are performed by

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

students. The majority of

service sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the second ...

, light

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...

, and

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

jobs are considered secondary labor. Secondary market jobs are sometimes referred to as “food and filth” jobs, a reference to workers in

fast food Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredien ...

, or yard work, for example. A secondary-market job is distinct from a "secondary worker". The latter term refers to someone in a family (traditionally, the wife or a child) who earns a smaller income than the "breadwinner" in order to supplement family income.

Challenge to economics

The existence of the secondary labor market challenges classical explanations of the functioning of the labor market. Classical and

neoclassical economists Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...

conceived of the labor market as a

commodity market A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manufactured products, such as cocoa, fruit and sugar. Hard commodities are mined, such as gold and oil. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investin ...

: the concurrent interaction of labor supply (rational workers seeking their well-being) and labor demand (rational employers searching to maximize their profits) should determine general employment and wage levels. Additionally, the existence of

ethnic enclave In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration ...

s further challenge the neoclassical economic thought as immigrants are able to enter a supposed third labor market, which cater specifically to the needs of ethnic minorities. These traditional theories leave unexplained major real-life issues, such as the large differences observed among wages and employment conditions in the current labor market. The Neoclassical school had argued that these differences were due to disparities in worker productivity based on employees' different

human capital Human capital is a concept used by social scientists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. Human capital has a substantial ...

endowments, but as critics have pointed out, most of them would be due to institutional factors more than to economic causes. In other words, it is not people that are different but rather job characteristics, and it is not human productivity that is behind the differences but rather market, technical, organizational, and political factors.

References

{{reflist Employment classifications Demographic economics

Challenge to economics

See also

References