INCOME STRUCTURE AND MOBILITY1
| Published date | 01 November 1967 |
| Author | L. C. Hunter |
| Date | 01 November 1967 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1967.tb00522.x |
INCOME
STRUCTURE
AND MOBILITY1
L.
C.
HUNTER*
LABOUR
mobility can involve changes of many different types
-
geo-
graphical, industrial, occupational or inter-firm. Any particular job
change may involve more than one of these kinds of change (which are
themselves subject to possible further sub-classification) and of course job-
changes frequently occur within the firm itself without changes in em-
ployer at all. Movements into and out of the labour force are themselves
frequently regarded as a form of mobility. The net effect of such changes,
according to economic theory, should be to improve the allocation of
labour resources in the economy (and even among different economies
through international migration) in response to shifts in technology, in
the pattern of demand for goods and services, and
so
on. Again according
to theory, one of the principal factors inducing mobility and ensuring an
efficient distribution of labour in keeping with changing requirements is
changes in the structure of relative wages or income.
No
sooner has thc
question of differentials been introduced than one is again faced with a
range
of
possibilities, involving earnings differences between men and
women, white and coloured workers, the
old
and the young, the more
skilled and the less skilled, the richer and poorer regions, etc. This list,
linked with the possible variations in type of mobility, gives some im-
pression of the complexity of the subject matter which might be discussed
under the given title, and underlines the need in this article for a drastic
limitation of the ground to be covered.
In the search for a means of limitation, it
is
of considerable help that
a
large and comprehensive study of wages and labour mobility has recently
been published by
O.E.C.D.,
while other publications (again notably
from
O.E.C.D.)
make some contribution towards an evaluation of the
extensive but inevitably unsystematic literature on research findings with
respect to the mobility of different groups of labour.2 Despite the ever-
growing volume of research on mobility problems, there still remain con-
siderable gaps in our knowledge, and
it
is
on one of these that
I
would like
to concentrate.
One of the major issues of debate in the field of mobility over many
*Senior Lecturer in the Department
of
Social and Economic Research, University
of
Glasgow
This paper
was
presented at the first World Congress
of
the International Industrial Rela-
tions Association, Geneva, 1967
The
first
mentioned source is P.
de
Wolff
et
al.,
‘
LVages and
Labour
Mobility’,
(O.E.C.D;,
Paris
1965).
Other references include G. Beijer.
‘Nafioml Rural Manpower
-
.il@~rfrnent
to
Industry
,
(O.E.C.D.. Paris
1965).
and
L.
C. Hunter and G.
L.
Reid,
‘Urban
Worker
Mobilip’
(O.E.C.D.,
forthcoming)
:
also
.J.
R.
Crossley,
‘Collective Bargaining, Wage Structure, etc.,’ in
Wage-
Structure
in
Theory
and Practice’,
ed. E.
M.
Hugh-Jones (North-Holland 1966)
386
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