the curriculum said an advance in technology that increases the marginal product of labor increases the demand for labor. but my arguement is the increase of marginal product might be offset by the increase of the wage, because new labor need to master the new technology to get the job offer, so they ask for a higher wage.
hmmm so lets say there’s a new technology…say, computers… will computer technicians necessarily demand higher wages? ok, lets say that they do, since, there may not be many people who can use computers, so they demand a premium wage… other people will see that the computer industry pays high wages, and so more and more people will enter this industry, driving wage down towards an equilibrium… im just rambling, but at the end of all this, whats happened… there was an advance in technology… and this caused in increase in the demand for labour… the higher wages even helped to increase this demand… remember that the demand for labour is from the viewpoint fo the FIRM… workers provide the SUPPLY of labour…
wolwol, it’s helpful to consider the cost of productive resources in relation to their productivity. Profitability is maximized when the marginal revenue product (MRP) equals a firm’s marginal price of employing that resource. Granted, this relation doesn’t indicate whether aggregate demand for a resource will rise or fall, but your book’s observation is intuitively true. Demand for a resource will increase if it becomes more productive, even if offset somewhat by increased costs. Economics discussions are easier using charts and I’m confident your books will thoroughly address these topics.