Describe two major changes to have occurred in the UK labour market over the past twenty
Throughout this essay I intend to look at the affect of the minimum wage on the labour market and look at whether its introduction meant fairer pay for all, or a device to exclude the poorly qualified from employment as the higher wages may attract new people to the labour market. I will also look at the gradual de industrialisation of the work place and the need for the labour market to change with it, bringing the need for greater education and retraining to ensure that if people want to remain in employment they keep up to date with current skills. ... If the employer had felt it would be better to employ middle class people the minimum wage has done little to improve peoples position in the job market, the increased supply of labour has forced people with less qualifications and skills out of the market for jobs, suggesting that the minimum wage could possibly increase social inequality as even the lowest paid jobs are taken over by the middle classes looking to earn a supplementary income. This then comes back to the point that Wilkinson was making about that people with the lowest paid jobs are those without any special skills, only in this situation where the market has and excess amount of labour and so those at the bottom end of the scale end up unemployed rather than in a low paid job. Wilkinson (1992) noted that unions are sensitive to changes in wages throughout all links in the chain of command and suggests that an increase at the bottom could lead a call for all other workers to receive an increase. ... If non of these could be achieved then the company would have to make cuts, usually in the number of labour force. ... It is believed that this will be reflected all over the low paid industries as the cost of the labour has very little influence over the cost of the final product Over the last twenty years, possibly even before that, there has been a major change in the way that the labour market has to present itself, once Britain was a country that relied heavily industry, primary and secondary, as one of the major sources of employment but with the closure of the mines, steel works, shipyard etc many, mainly men, have been left with a feeling of anomie as they have to try and adjust to working in the tertiary sector or no longer being the breadwinner of a family relying on the income of their wives, who may be in part time work. ... The de industrialisation of British industry and the growth of information technology within the workplace has meant that the workforce has needed to adapt and keep up to date with the latest skills, and like I noted when speaking on the issue of an over crowded labour market, people without skills are left to be unemployed.