We explain what labor is and its different types: direct or indirect, skilled or unskilled, management and commercial.
What is labor?
In economic terms, labor is understood as both physical and mental effort carried out by a worker to manufacture, repair, or maintain a good, as well as the economic remuneration that said work implies, that is, the price of work services.
Every type of productive or service initiative requires a workforce. Precisely that work capacity is what the working class has to exchange in the economic circuit, generally in exchange for a salary.
The total of a country's available workers, that is, the majority of its economically active population (EAP), can be considered its labor force. Depending on the labor, social and tax requirements contemplated by the legal system of said country, it may be more expensive or cheaper for potential employers.
Labor in its current sense was born along with the Industrial Revolution, when peasant workers migrated to the cities to become industrial workers.
Today it is a much more diverse population, including professionals and self-employed workers, as well as other sectors whose importance in the economic circuit is constantly threatened by the pressures of increasing automation and technologization of the production process.
See also: Human resources
Direct and indirect labor
A first distinction within what labor is, requires differences:
- Direct labor. It is the one that is involved in the production circuit. Their tasks, essential, can be easily associated with the good or service obtained. The workers in a compote factory, for example, are direct labor, assigned to the company's payroll.
- Indirect labor. It is the group of workers who do not immediately intervene in the productive work, but rather accompany, optimize and control it from an administrative, commercial, etc. perspective. In the case of the compote factory, the area coordinators, those in charge of marketing, the accountants and the people in charge of personnel selection are indirect labor.
Skilled and unskilled labor
The skilled workers have received some degree of education or training without which they could not carry out certain tasks (or not effectively).
On the contrary, Unskilled labor is those workers who have not received any type of training and they have only their labor power to offer.
Obviously, skilled workers are always more desirable and usually cost much more than unskilled workers, since they have specialized knowledge and/or experience that in turn cost time and money to acquire.
Management labor
Management labor is often called administrative and managerial positions of a company or organization in charge of the managerial and executive tasks of the production circuit. These are salaried but highly trained personnel, destined for trustworthy work and whose participation in the production circuit is not direct, but rather leadership.
Commercial labor
The group of workers who are not directly linked to the product manufacturing circuit is known as commercial labor. On the contrary, participate in their final stage of commercialization: distributors, sellers, dealers, etc.
They are forms of more or less specialized labor whose job is to deliver the product to its natural consumers and carry out the economic transaction of its consumption.
Continue with: Means of production
References
- “Labor” on Wikipedia.
- “Manpower” in Encyclopedia of Politics.
- “Workforce” in Business Dictionary.
