ABSTRACT
The preceding eleven chapters have identified the analytical “building blocks” that are needed to understand the functioning of labor markets in the present-day setting of the United States as a service-oriented postindustrial economy in a globally interdependent ecosystem. Our concern now is to understand how labor’s “price” and its level of employment in particular industries is determined. Our approach differs from that of most other books in labor economics because it begins from the perspective of the macroeconomy and the determination of such key economic aggregates as the economy’s level of employment and its gross domestic (and national) products. These are the magnitudes that establish the “economic climate” within which business firms, households, and unions make their economic decisions.
