Is the Labour Market actually a Market?

The term «labour market» is obviously just an expression used out of convenience, albeit misleadingly. First of all, because there exists a variety of markets for different qualifications. Next, because such skills are allocated and evaluated partly within the company, using procedures that scarcely resemble market mechanisms. Finally, because job conditions and wages are largely determined by regulations and negotiations at more or less centralised levels.

Yet the efficiency and stability of economies depend on the respective weight of institutions and market fluctuations in the formation of job levels and compensation. Excessive institutional constraints may hold back labour mobility and maintain a dualism of jobs, keeping a portion of the active population in an unstable and undervalued job situation, while insufficient regulation can create other unacceptable inequalities and make the economy more unstable. But the nature and importance of these effects differ according to how businesses are structured, their governance, and their social model.

In this session, we will explore whether there are optimal models, or whether it is the consistency between the mobilisation of human resources and other dimensions of the economic and social model that matter.