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71-605: Roombeek ( Dutch pronunciation: [ˈroːmbeːk] ) is a working-class suburb of the Dutch city of Enschede . It made international headlines due to the Enschede fireworks warehouse disaster (Dutch, "Vuurwerkramp") on 13 May 2000. The warehouse explosion in Roombeek caused 23 deaths, and wounded 947 people. Around 400 homes were destroyed, and 1,500 were seriously damaged by the fireworks explosion. Prior, there were already plans for

142-449: A "slum of hope" from the 1920s and 1930s, members of this class are given hardly any chances of attaining membership of the formal economic structures. Diane Reay stresses the challenges that working-class students can face during the transition to and within higher education, and research intensive universities in particular. One factor can be the university community being perceived as a predominately middle-class social space, creating

213-470: A key change in these Soviet-style societies has been a new type of proletarianization , often effected by the administratively achieved forced displacement of peasants and rural workers. Since then, four major industrial states have turned towards semi-market-based governance ( China , Laos , Vietnam , Cuba ), and one state has turned inwards into an increasing cycle of poverty and brutalization ( North Korea ). Other states of this sort have collapsed (such as

284-404: A labour pool that exceeds the jobs pool. However, if the demand for labour is larger than the supply, salary increases, as employee have more bargaining power while employers have to compete for scarce labour. The Labour force (LF) is defined as the number of people of working age , who are either employed or actively looking for work (unemployed). The labour force participation rate ( LFPR )

355-479: A major renovation of the district. Many old factory complexes are now renovated and suitable for living, work, and cultural activities. A location along the Roombeek waterway was dedicated as a memorial to the four firefighters who died in the fireworks disaster. After the fireworks disaster, confidence in the town needed to be restored. Thus, a supervised reconstruction of the area was carried out, called Project Reconstruction Roombeek' . Urban supervisor Pi de Bruijn

426-413: A positive wage elasticity ). This positive relationship is increasing until point F, beyond which the income effect dominates the substitution effect and the individual starts to reduce the number of labour hours he supplies (point G) as wage increases; in other words, the wage elasticity is now negative. The direction of the slope may change more than once for some individuals, and the labour supply curve

497-401: A self-identification with the working class group. This subjective approach allows individuals, rather than researchers, to define their own "subjective" and "perceived" social class. Karl Marx defined the working class or proletariat as those individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production . He argued that they were responsible for creating

568-423: A sense of otherness due to class differences in social norms and knowledge of navigating academia. Working classes in different countries Labour economics Labour markets or job markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labour economics looks at the suppliers of labour services (workers) and the demanders of labour services (employers), and attempts to understand

639-554: A single employer and thus do not satisfy the perfect competition assumption of the neoclassical model above. The model of a monopsonistic labour market gives a lower quantity of employment and a lower equilibrium wage rate than does the competitive model. In many real-life situations, the assumption of perfect information is unrealistic. An employer does not necessarily know how hard workers are working or how productive they are. This provides an incentive for workers to shirk from providing their full effort, called moral hazard . Since it

710-570: A time constraint, with respect to the choices of labour time and leisure time: This is shown in the graph below, which illustrates the trade-off between allocating time to leisure activities and allocating it to income-generating activities. The linear constraint indicates that every additional hour of leisure undertaken requires the loss of an hour of labour and thus of the fixed amount of goods that that labour's income could purchase. Individuals must choose how much time to allocate to leisure activities and how much to working . This allocation decision

781-403: A variety of interesting effects. This is because the absolute value of the slope of the budget constraint is the wage rate. The point of optimisation (point A) reflects the equivalency between the wage rate and the marginal rate of substitution of leisure for income (the absolute value of the slope of the indifference curve). Because the marginal rate of substitution of leisure for income is also

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852-517: Is a derived demand; that is, hiring labour is not desired for its own sake but rather because it aids in producing output, which contributes to an employer's revenue and hence profits. The demand for an additional amount of labour depends on the Marginal Revenue Product (MRP) and the marginal cost (MC) of the worker. With a perfectly competitive goods market, the MRP is calculated by multiplying

923-405: Is a measure of the work done by human beings. It is conventionally contrasted with other factors of production , such as land and capital . Some theories focus on human capital , or entrepreneurship , (which refers to the skills that workers possess and not necessarily the actual work that they produce). Labour is unique to study because it is a special type of good that cannot be separated from

994-466: Is costly, and only those who excel in academia can succeed in becoming doctors. The port cleaner, however, requires relatively less training. The supply of doctors is therefore significantly less elastic than that of port cleaners. Demand is also inelastic as there is a high demand for doctors and medical care is a necessity, so the NHS will pay higher wage rates to attract the profession. Some labour markets have

1065-558: Is different for different individuals. Other variables that affect the labour supply decision, and can be readily incorporated into the model, include taxation, welfare, work environment, and income as a signal of ability or social contribution. A firm's labour demand is based on its marginal physical product of labour (MPP L ). This is defined as the additional output (or physical product) that results from an increase of one unit of labour (or from an infinitesimal increase in labour). (See also Production theory basics .) Labour demand

1136-524: Is difficult for the employer to identify the hard-working and the shirking employees, there is no incentive to work hard and productivity falls overall, leading to the hiring of more workers and a lower unemployment rate. One solution that is used to avoid a moral hazard is stock options that grant employees the chance to benefit directly from a firm's success. However, this solution has attracted criticism as executives with large stock-option packages have been suspected of acting to over-inflate share values to

1207-449: Is due to numerous factors including labour supply and demand shifts as well as institutional changes in the labour market. On the shifts in labour supply and demand, factors include demand for skilled workers going up more than the supply of skilled workers and relative to unskilled workers as well as technological changes that increase productivity; all of these things cause wages to go up for skilled labour while unskilled worker wages stay

1278-417: Is education, whereby employers assume that high-ability workers will have higher levels of education. Employers can then compensate high-ability workers with higher wages. However, signalling does not always work, and it may appear to an external observer that education has raised the marginal product of labour, without this necessarily being true. One of the major research achievements of the 1990–2010 period

1349-427: Is informed by the indifference curve labelled IC 1 . The curve indicates the combinations of leisure and work that will give the individual a specific level of utility. The point where the highest indifference curve is just tangent to the constraint line (point A), illustrates the optimum for this supplier of labour services. If consumption is measured by the value of income obtained, this diagram can be used to show

1420-424: Is on "how firms establish, maintain, and end employment relationships and on how firms provide incentives to employees," including models and empirical work on incentive systems and as constrained by economic efficiency and risk/incentive tradeoffs relating to personnel compensation. Inequality and discrimination in the workplace can have many effects on workers. In the context of labour economics, inequality

1491-442: Is shown by the shift from point A to point B. The relative magnitude of the two effects depends on the circumstances. In some cases, such as the one shown, the substitution effect is greater than the income effect (in which case more time will be allocated to working), but in other cases, the income effect will be greater than the substitution effect (in which case less time is allocated to working). The intuition behind this latter case

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1562-400: Is that the individual decides that the higher earnings on the previous amount of labour can be "spent" by purchasing more leisure. If the substitution effect is greater than the income effect, an individual's supply of labour services will increase as the wage rate rises, which is represented by a positive slope in the labour supply curve (as at point E in the adjacent diagram, which exhibits

1633-426: Is the number of people in the labour force divided by the size of the adult civilian noninstitutional population (or by the population of working age that is not institutionalized ), LFPR = LF/Population. The non-labour force includes those who are not looking for work, those who are institutionalized (such as in prisons or psychiatric wards), stay-at-home spouses, children not of working age, and those serving in

1704-722: Is used as a method to attain cost efficiency. Variables like employment level, unemployment level, labour force, and unfilled vacancies are called stock variables because they measure a quantity at a point in time. They can be contrasted with flow variables which measure a quantity over a duration of time. Changes in the labour force are due to flow variables such as natural population growth, net immigration, new entrants, and retirements . Changes in unemployment depend on inflows (non-employed people starting to look for jobs and employed people who lose their jobs that are looking for new ones) and outflows (people who find new employment and people who stop looking for employment). When looking at

1775-518: Is usually referring to the unequal distribution of earning between households. Inequality is commonly measured by economists using the Gini coefficient . This coefficient does not have a concrete meaning but is more used as a way to compare inequality across regions. The higher the Gini coefficient is calculated to be the larger inequality exists in a region. Over time, inequality has, on average, been increasing. This

1846-479: Is within walking distance of the Enschede Station. In addition, the district also accessible by bus from: 52°13′47″N 6°53′46″E  /  52.2297°N 6.89611°E  / 52.2297; 6.89611 Working-class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary -based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of

1917-526: The Soviet Union ). Since 1960, large-scale proletarianization and enclosure of commons has occurred in the third world , generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such as India have been slowly undergoing social change, expanding the size of the urban working class. The informal working class is a sociological term coined by Mike Davis for a class of over a billion predominantly young urban people who are in no way formally connected to

1988-408: The global economy and who try to survive primarily in slums . According to Davis, this class no longer corresponds to the socio-theoretical concepts of a class, from Marx, Max Weber or the theory of modernization . Thereafter, this class developed worldwide from the 1960s, especially in the southern hemisphere. In contrast to previous notions of a class of the lumpen proletariat or the notions of

2059-472: The price of the end product or service by the Marginal Physical Product of the worker. If the MRP is greater than a firm's Marginal Cost, then the firm will employ the worker since doing so will increase profit . The firm only employs however up to the point where MRP=MC, and not beyond, in neoclassical economic theory. The MRP of the worker is affected by other inputs to production with which

2130-454: The wealth of a society, asserting that the working class physically build bridges, craft furniture, grow food, and nurse children, but do not own land or factories . A sub-section of the proletariat, the lumpenproletariat ( rag-proletariat ), are the extremely poor and unemployed, such as day labourers and homeless people. Marx considered them to be devoid of class consciousness. In Marxist terms wage labourers and those dependent on

2201-403: The welfare state are working class, and those who live on accumulated capital are not, and this broad dichotomy defines the class struggle . In The Communist Manifesto , Marx and Friedrich Engels argue that it is the destiny of the working class to displace the capitalist system, with the dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the " dictatorship of the bourgeoisie ") abolishing

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2272-534: The English Working Class , E. P. Thompson argues that the English working class was present at its own creation, and seeks to describe the transformation of pre-modern labouring classes into a modern, politically self-conscious, working class. Starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class (see Soviet working class ). Some historians have noted that

2343-406: The ability to create a higher derivative efficiency of labour, especially on a national and international level, compared to simpler forms of labour distribution, leading to a higher financial GDP growth and output. An efficient labour market is important for the private sector as it drives up derivative income through the reduction of relative costs of labour. This presupposes that division of labour

2414-432: The aggregate demand for labour. Likewise, the supply curves of all the individual workers (mentioned above) can be summed to obtain the aggregate supply of labour. These supply and demand curves can be analysed in the same way as any other industry demand and supply curves to determine equilibrium wage and employment levels. Wage differences exist, particularly in mixed and fully/partly flexible labour markets. For example,

2485-410: The cost of hiring a non-minority worker, which causes less hiring of the minority. Another taste model is for employee discrimination, which does not cause a decline in the hiring of minorities, but instead causes a more segregated workforce because the prejudiced worker feels that they should be paid more to work next to the worker they are prejudiced against or that they are not paid an equal amount as

2556-477: The decision of how many hours to work, one must look at the income effect and substitution effect . The wage increase shown in the previous diagram can be decomposed into two separate effects. The pure income effect is shown as the movement from point A to point C in the next diagram. Consumption increases from Y A to Y C and – since the diagram assumes that leisure is a normal good – leisure time increases from X A to X C . (Employment time decreases by

2627-447: The degree of capital mobility within and between countries. According to neoclassical theory, over the relevant range of outputs, the marginal physical product of labour is declining (law of diminishing returns). That is, as more and more units of labour are employed, their additional output begins to decline. Additionally, although the MRP is a good way of expressing an employer's demand, other factors such as social group formation can

2698-480: The demand, as well as the labour supply. This constantly restructures exactly what a labour market is, and leads way to cause problems for theories of inflation. The marginal revenue product of labour can be used as the demand for labour curve for this firm in the short run. In competitive markets , a firm faces a perfectly elastic supply of labour which corresponds with the wage rate and the marginal resource cost of labour (W = S L = MFC L ). In imperfect markets,

2769-519: The detriment of the long-run welfare of the firm. Another solution, foreshadowed by the rise of temporary workers in Japan and the firing of many of these workers in response to the financial crisis of 2008, is more flexible job- contracts and -terms that encourage employees to work less than full-time by partially compensating for the loss of hours, relying on workers to adapt their working time in response to job requirements and economic conditions instead of

2840-412: The diagram would have to be adjusted because MFC L would then be equal to the wage rate divided by marginal costs. Because optimum resource allocation requires that marginal factor costs equal marginal revenue product, this firm would demand L units of labour as shown in the diagram. The demand for labour of this firm can be summed with the demand for labour of all other firms in the economy to obtain

2911-400: The difference in wages that occurs because of differences in skills versus the returns to those skills. A way of modelling discrimination in the workplace when dealing with wages are Gary Becker 's taste models. Using taste models, employer discrimination can be thought of as the employer not hiring the minority worker because of their perceived cost of hiring that worker is higher than that of

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2982-411: The employer trying to determine how much work is needed to complete a given task and overestimating. Another aspect of uncertainty results from the firm's imperfect knowledge about worker ability. If a firm is unsure about a worker's ability, it pays a wage assuming that the worker's ability is the average of similar workers. This wage under compensates high-ability workers which may drive them away from

3053-649: The following objectives: The new plan of Roombeek (after the 2000 disaster), is based on the original map (a familiar area). The emphasis is on three axes: the Roomweg from east to west, the Lonneker Spoorlaan from south to north, and the Museum Avenue . Along the Museum Avenue axis is a strict height restriction, which means that all new buildings must be reviewed by De Bruijn himself. The three axial roads lead to

3124-423: The hours available to them. Let w denote the hourly wage, k denote total hours available for labour and leisure, L denote the chosen number of working hours, π denote income from non-labour sources, and A denote leisure hours chosen. The individual's problem is to maximise utility U , which depends on total income available for spending on consumption and also depends on the time spent in leisure, subject to

3195-418: The labour market as well as at the same time attracting low-ability workers. Such a phenomenon, called adverse selection , can sometimes lead to market collapse. One way to combat adverse selection, firms will try to use signalling , pioneered by Michael Spence , whereby employers could use various characteristics of applicants differentiate between high-ability or low-ability workers. One common signal used

3266-436: The labour market may act as a non-clearing market . While according to neoclassical theory most markets quickly attain a point of equilibrium without excess supply or demand, this may not be true of the labour market: it may have a persistent level of unemployment. Contrasting the labour market to other markets also reveals persistent compensating differentials among similar workers. Models that assume perfect competition in

3337-427: The labour market, as discussed below, conclude that workers earn their marginal product of labour. Households are suppliers of labour. In microeconomic theory, people are assumed to be rational and seeking to maximize their utility function . In the labour market model, their utility function expresses trade-offs in preference between leisure time and income from time used for labour. However, they are constrained by

3408-402: The labour market. Many sociologists, political economists, and heterodox economists claim that labour economics tends to lose sight of the complexity of individual employment decisions. These decisions, particularly on the supply side, are often loaded with considerable emotional baggage and a purely numerical analysis can miss important dimensions of the process, such as social benefits of

3479-591: The labour market. Macroeconomic techniques look at the interrelations between the labour market, the goods market, the money market, and the foreign trade market. It looks at how these interactions influence macro variables such as employment levels, participation rates, aggregate income and gross domestic product . The labour market in macroeconomic theory shows that the supply of labour exceeds demand, which has been proven by salary growth that lags productivity growth. When labour supply exceeds demand, salary faces downward pressure due to an employer's ability to pick from

3550-743: The labour of others. The term, which is primarily used to evoke images of laborers suffering "class disadvantage in spite of their individual effort", can also have racial connotations, applying diverse themes of poverty and implications about whether one is deserving of aid. In other contexts the term working class refers to a section of society dependent on physical labour , especially when compensated with an hourly wage (for certain types of science, as well as journalistic or political analysis). Working-class occupations can be categorized into four groups: unskilled labourers, artisans, outworkers , and factory workers. Common alternative definitions of Working Class include definition by income level, whereby

3621-507: The late 18th century, under the influence of the Enlightenment , European society was in a state of change, and this change could not be reconciled with the idea of a changeless God-created social order. Wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics (i.e. excessive consumption of alcohol, perceived laziness and inability to save money). In The Making of

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3692-452: The military. The unemployment level is defined as the labour force minus the number of people currently employed. The unemployment rate is defined as the level of unemployment divided by the labour force. The employment rate is defined as the number of people currently employed divided by the adult population (or by the population of working age). In these statistics , self-employed people are counted as employed. The labour market has

3763-450: The net of exports minus imports (X−M), since AE = C + I + G + (X−M). Neoclassical economists view the labour market as similar to other markets in that the forces of supply and demand jointly determine the price (in this case the wage rate) and quantity (in this case the number of people employed). However, the labour market differs from other markets (like the markets for goods or the financial market) in several ways. In particular,

3834-418: The overall macroeconomy, several types of unemployment have been identified, which can be separated into two categories of natural and unnatural unemployment. Natural Unemployment Unnatural Unemployment Aggregate expenditure (AE) can be increased, according to Keynes, by increasing consumption spending (C), increasing investment spending (I), increasing government spending (G), or increasing

3905-442: The owner (i.e. the work cannot be separated from the person who does it). A labour market is also different from other markets in that workers are the suppliers and firms are the demanders. There are two sides to labour economics. Labour economics can generally be seen as the application of microeconomic or macroeconomic techniques to the labour market. Microeconomic techniques study the role of individuals and individual firms in

3976-409: The productivity of the worker. Many regions and countries have enacted government policies to combat discrimination, including discrimination in the workplace. Discrimination can be modelled and measured in numerous ways. The Oaxaca decomposition is a common method used to calculate the amount of discrimination that exists when wages differ between groups of people. This decomposition aims to calculate

4047-448: The ratio of the marginal utility of leisure (MU ) to the marginal utility of income (MU ), one can conclude: where Y is total income and the right side is the wage rate. If the wage rate increases, this individual's constraint line pivots up from X,Y 1 to X,Y 2 . He/she can now purchase more goods and services. His/her utility will increase from point A on IC 1 to point B on IC 2 . To understand what effect this might have on

4118-411: The resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income. These patterns exist because each individual in the market is presumed to make rational choices based on the information that they know regarding wage, desire to provide labour, and desire for leisure. Labour markets are normally geographically bounded, but the rise of the internet has brought about a 'planetary labour market' in some sectors. Labour

4189-471: The same social unit , a third estate of people who were neither aristocrats nor church officials. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other pre-industrial societies . The social position of these labouring classes was viewed as ordained by natural law and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the German Peasants' War . In

4260-456: The same amount as leisure increases.) But that is only part of the picture. As the wage rate rises, the worker will substitute away from leisure and into the provision of labour—that is, will work more hours to take advantage of the higher wage rate, or in other words substitute away from leisure because of its higher opportunity cost . This substitution effect is represented by the shift from point C to point B. The net impact of these two effects

4331-477: The same or decline. As for the institutional changes, a decrease in union power and a declining real minimum wage, which both reduce unskilled workers wages, and tax cuts for the wealthy all increase the inequality gap between groups of earners. As for discrimination, it is the difference in pay that can be attributed to the demographic differences between people, such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc, even though these factors do not affect

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4402-461: The social relationships underpinning the class system before then developing into a communist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In feudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the labouring class, a group made up of different professions, trades and occupations. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of

4473-520: The traditional town centre of Roombeek, where the Ekenhof and Prismare are located. The node is also the square to The Roozendaal and Twentse Welle. The area is known for a lively public character. There are now large tracts of public space, including: Roombeek has an area with innovative and unique architecture. Buildings and designs from the following architects can be found in Roobeek: Roombeek

4544-448: The wages of a doctor and a port cleaner, both employed by the NHS , differ greatly. There are various factors concerning this phenomenon. This includes the MRP of the worker. A doctor's MRP is far greater than that of the port cleaner. In addition, the barriers to becoming a doctor are far greater than that of becoming a port cleaner. To become a doctor takes a lot of education and training which

4615-507: The worker can work (e.g. machinery), often aggregated under the term " capital ". It is typical in economic models for greater availability of capital for a firm to increase the MRP of the worker, all else equal. Education and training are counted as " human capital ". Since the amount of physical capital affects MRP, and since financial capital flows can affect the amount of physical capital available, MRP and thus wages can be affected by financial capital flows within and between countries, and

4686-473: The worker they are prejudiced against. One more taste model involves customer discrimination, whereby the employers themselves are not prejudiced but believe that their customers might be, so therefore the employer is less likely to hire the minority worker if they are going to interact with customers that are prejudiced. There are many other taste models other than these that Gary Becker has made to explain discrimination that causes differences in hiring in wages in

4757-512: The working class is contrasted with a middle class on the basis of access to economic resources, education , cultural interests, and other goods and services, and the "white working class" has been "loosely defined" by the New York Times as comprising white people without college degrees. Researchers in Australia have suggested that working class status should be defined subjectively as

4828-500: The working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour . Most common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who hold blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, or whose income is insufficiently high to place them in the middle class , or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into this category; thus, this definition can include almost all of

4899-528: The working population of industrialized economies . As with many terms describing social class , working class is defined and used in different ways. One definition used by many socialists is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour, a group otherwise referred to as the proletariat . In this sense, the working class includes white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership or

4970-556: Was chosen to lead the project, due to his background in Twente , and extensive experience with other major urban projects. De Bruijn decided that the district largely be planned according to the ideas of Roombeeks' citizenry. The project was started with the involvement of many inhabitants of Roombeek. Reconstruction project staff talked with area families (at times accompanied by an interpreter), so that residents could speak their demands, and their wishes could be put on paper. This resulted in

5041-570: Was the development of a framework with dynamic search , matching, and bargaining. At the micro level, one sub-discipline eliciting increased attention in recent decades is analysis of internal labour markets , that is, within firms (or other organisations), studied in personnel economics from the perspective of personnel management . By contrast, external labour markets "imply that workers move somewhat fluidly between firms and wages are determined by some aggregate process where firms do not have significant discretion over wage setting." The focus

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