Economic Methods



Economic Methods

Introduction

Work is a part of life for almost all people around the world. Though the types of work people do and the conditions under which that work is done vary endlessly, people get up each morning and choose to use their human capital in ways that generate some sort of productive good or service or that help prepare them to be productive economic citizens in the future. Some of this work is done in the privacy of the home, where beds are made, children are raised, and lawns are mowed. While this unpaid productive activity is essential to a well-functioning economy, this paper addresses work time and skills that are sold in markets in exchange for wages and other compensation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the unique nature of labor markets and to consider how these markets will evolve in response to changes in the nature of the work people do over time. Use of labor, like any economic resource, has to be considered carefully in light of productivity and opportunity costs. Though many factors affect this decision-making process, in most cases labor is allocated by market forces that determine wages and employment.

The participation rate of labor force to determine the economically active working age population of a country. As such it provides an indication of the relative amplitude of the available labor to produce goods and services in the economy. The breakdown of the active population by sex and age group provides the features of the distribution of the economically active population in a given country. The participation rate of the labor force is calculated by determining the percentage of people participating in the workforce with respect to the population of working age. The labor force is the sum of the number of employed and unemployed. The working age population is the population over a certain age specified for measuring economic characteristics.

Discussion

The purpose of this study is to determine the labor force participation rate (LFPR-MF) for each country; there are important differences between the participation rates of different countries populations as well as different socioeconomic categories. Malnutrition, disability and chronic illness may affect the ability to work and, therefore, also considered as important determinants of participation in the workforce, especially in low-income means. For the purpose of this study the researcher has applied different statistical techniques like descriptive statistics, histograms and t test. The data set has been collected from the official website (kilm.ilo.org), altogether there were 189 countries that have been selected.

Labour force participation rate (%)

Mean

63.67195767

Standard Error

0.756395326

Median

62.7

Mode

70.5

Standard Deviation

10.39871652

Sample Variance

108.1333052

Kurtosis

-0.089451137

Skewness

0.221629442

Range

48.5

Minimum

40.8

Maximum

89.3

Sum

12034

Count

189

The result in table above shows the descriptive statistics for the data set collected, it can be observed that on average the labor force participation rate is around 63%, which means that more than half of the population above 15 years of age is a part of labor force. There is huge difference between the minimum and maximum values therefore we can say that the average is good enough for the whole population of the ...