Dual-sector Model - Surplus Labour and The Growth of The Economy

Surplus Labour and The Growth of The Economy

Surplus labour can be used instead of capital in the creation of new industrial investment projects, or it can be channeled into nascent industries, which are labour intensive in their early stages. Such growth does not raise the value of the subsistence wage, because the supply of labor exceeds the demand at that wage, and rising production via improved labour techniques has the effect of lowering the capital coefficient. Although labour is assumed to be in surplus, it is mainly unskilled. This inhibits growth since technical progress necessary for growth requires skilled labor. But should there be a labor surplus and a modest capital, this bottleneck can be broken through the provision of training and education facilities. The utility of unlimited supplies of labour to growth objectives depends upon the amount of capital available at the same time. Should there be surplus labour, agriculture will derive no productive use from it, so a transfer to a non agriculture sector will be of mutual benefit. It provides jobs to the agrarian population and reduces the burden of population from land. Industry now obtains its labour. Labour must be encouraged to move to increase productivity in agriculture. To start such a movement, the capitalist sector will have to pay a compensatory payment determined by the wage rate which people can earn outside their present sector, plus a set of other which include the cost of living in the new sector and changes in the level of profits in the existing sector. The margin capitalists may have to pay is as much as 30 per cent above the average subsistence wage, WW1 in figure which represents the capitalist sector is shown by N; OW is the industrial wage. Given the profit maximization assumption, employment of labor within the industrial sector is given by the point where marginal product is equal to the rate of wages, i.e. OM.

Since the wages in the capitalist sector depend on the earnings of the subsistence sector, capitalists would like to keep down productivity/wages in the subsistence sector, so that the capitalist sector may expand at a fixed wage. In the capitalist sector labor is employed up to the point where its marginal product equals wage, since a capitalist employer would be reducing his surplus if he paid labor more than he received for what is produced. But this need not be true in subsistence agriculture as wages could be equal to average product or the level of subsistence. The total product labor ONPM is divided between the payments to labor in the form of wages, OWPM, and the capitalist surplus, NPW. The growth of the capitalist sector and the rate of labor absorption from the subsistence sector depends on the use made of capitalist surplus. When the surplus is reinvested, the total product of labor will rise. The marginal product line shifts upwards tot the right, that is to N1. Assuming wages are constant, the industrial sector now provides more employment. Hence employment rises by MM1. The amount of capitalist surplus goes up from WNP to WN1P'. This amount can now be reinvested and the process will be repeated and all the surplus labor would eventually be exhausted. When all the surplus labor in the subsistence sector has been attracted into the capitalist sector, wages in the subsistence sector will begin to rise, shifting the terms of trade in favor of agriculture, and causing wages in the capitalist sector to rise. Capital accumulation has caught up with the population and there is no longer scope for development from the initial source, i.e. unlimited supplies of labor. When all the surplus labor is exhausted, the supply of labor to the industrial sector becomes less than perfectly elastic. It is now in the interests of producers in the subsistence sector to compete for labor as the agricultural sector has become fully commercialized. It is the increase in the share of profits in the capitalist sector which ensures that labor surplus is continuously utilized and eventually exhausted. Real wages will tend to rise along with increases in productivity and the economy will enter into a stage of self-sustaining growth with a consistent nature.