Employment

Employment, retention of an individual by a person or institution to provide labour in return for wages or other payment. This is distinct from, for instance, serfdom or slavery, where the labour is not freely provided in return for payment and does not represent a cost for the employer. In economics, the term can be broadened to cover other factors of production, such as land and capital, but the common usage refers to paid workers. Employment generally excludes those whose work is unpaid, such as housewives or voluntary workers. Self employment also provides a considerable part of overall employment, between a quarter and a half of the workforce in developing countries, where an individual is effectively working for and paying himself or herself. Related to these cases are freelance or temporary employment, where an individual employee makes a contract to supply his or her labour without becoming a full-time employee. Other forms of employment include migrant labour, part-time work, and piecework.

Broad divisions are often made between employment in the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors. Economic development worldwide has so far exhibited a general shift in employment through these towards services as the economy develops. Predictions of future patterns of employment suggest a growth in self-employment and irregular freelance or contract labour in the developed economies, with workers acting as active vendors selling a portfolio of skills to interested institutions. This postulates an increasingly unstable and fluid pattern of employment, engendered by fierce global competition for work. However, underdevelopment in broad sectors of the developing world is likely to limit employment opportunities for much of the world's population to bare subsistence farming for the present.

Terms and conditions are historically one of the most contentious aspects of employment, because of their overall effect on the standards of living of the workers and the condition of society as a whole. Child labour and other notorious abuses of the early factory system are an integral phase in the evolution of modern employment. World bodies such as the International Labour Organization provide general standards of employment. Hours of labour, sick pay, holiday entitlement, and other such workplace benefits have in many cases been secured only after protracted struggle between trade unions or professional bodies and employers reluctant to reduce profits by incurring the costs involved. These costs are one of the major factors in the present perceived shift of work away from full-time salaried labour. Likewise, collective bargaining has been one aspect of labour relations testifying to the traditional structure of employment with employees and employers effectively divided into two camps. Some companies, especially in Japan, attempt to break down such divisions through common uniforms and canteens for all levels of staff, also operating extensive benefit schemes for their employees, even in some cases guaranteed lifetime employment.

Employment is the subject of a great variety of state initiatives, with most developed countries aspiring (at least in theory) to the goal of full employment, in which all who are able to work and wish to work can find work. Education and training policies are aspects of the effort to reduce unemployment, and thus achieve a stable and prosperous society. Equal opportunity and equal pay legislation are also typical of government efforts to spread employment opportunities as widely as possible. Employment as an economic issue cannot be detached from the social, cultural, and even political context of individual countries.