wage, income derived from human labour. Technically, wages and salaries cover all compensation made to employees for either physical or mental work, but they do not represent the income of the self-employed. Labour costs are not identical to wage and salary costs, because total labour costs may include such items as cafeterias or meeting rooms maintained for the convenience of employees. Wages and salaries usually include remuneration such as paid vacations, holidays, and sick leave, as well as fringe benefits and supplements in the form of pensions or health insurance sponsored by the employer. Additional compensation can be paid in the form of bonuses or stock options, many of which are linked to individual or group performance.
Theories of wage determination and speculations on what share the labour force contributes to the gross domestic product have varied from time to time, changing as the economic environment itself has changed. Contemporary wage theory could not have developed until the feudal system had been replaced by the modern economy with its modern institutions (such as corporations).
Adam Smith, drawing by John Kay, 1790.
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The Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), failed to propose a definitive theory of wages, but he anticipated several theories that were developed by others. Smith thought that wages were determined in the marketplace through the law of supply and demand. Workers and employers would naturally follow their own self-interest; labour would be attracted to the jobs where labour was needed most, and the resulting employment conditions would ultimately benefit the whole of society.
Although Smith discussed many elements central to employment, he gave no precise analysis of the supply of and demand for labour, nor did he weave them into a consistent theoretical pattern. He did, however, prefigure important developments in modern theory by arguing that the quality of worker skill was the central determinant of economic progress. Moreover, he noted that workers would need to be compensated by increased wages if they were to bear the cost of acquiring new skills—an assumption that still applies in contemporary human-capital theory. Smith also believed that in the case of an advancing nation, the wage level would have to be higher than the subsistence level in order to spur population growth, because more people would be needed to fill the extra jobs created by the expanding economy.
David Ricardo, portrait by Thomas Phillips, 1821; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London
Subsistence theories emphasize the supply aspects of the labour market while neglecting the demand aspects. They hold that change in the supply of workers is the basic force that drives real wages to the minimum required for subsistence (that is, for basic needs such as food and shelter). Elements of a subsistence theory appear in The Wealth of Nations, where Smith wrote that the wages paid to workers had to be enough to allow them to live and to support their families. The English classical economists who succeeded Smith, such as David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, held a more pessimistic outlook. Ricardo wrote that the “natural price” of labour was simply the price necessary to enable the labourers to subsist and to perpetuate the race. Ricardo’s statement was consistent with the Malthusian theory of population, which held that population adjusts to the means of supporting it.
(Read Thomas Malthus’s 1824 Britannica essay on population.)
Subsistence theorists argued that the market price of labour would not vary from the natural price for long: if wages rose above subsistence, the number of workers would increase and bring the wage rates down; if wages fell below subsistence, the number of workers would decrease and push the wage rates up. At the time that these economists wrote, most workers were actually living near the subsistence level, and population appeared to be trying to outrun the means of subsistence. Thus, the subsistence theory seemed to fit the facts. Although Ricardo said that the natural price of labour was not fixed (it could change if population levels moderated in relation to the food supply and other items necessary to maintain labour), later writers were more pessimistic about the prospects for wage earners. Their inflexible conclusion that wages would always be driven down earned the subsistence theory the name “iron law of wages.”
Smith said that the demand for labour could not increase except in proportion to the increase of the funds destined for the payment of wages. Ricardo maintained that an increase in capital would result in an increase in the demand for labour. Statements such as these foreshadowed the wages-fund theory, which held that a predetermined “fund” of wealth existed for the payment of wages. Smith defined this theoretical fund as the surplus or disposable income that could be used by the wealthy to employ others. Ricardo thought of it in terms of the capital—such as food, clothing, tools, raw materials, or machinery—needed for conditions of employment. The size of the fund could fluctuate over periods of time, but at any given moment the amount was fixed, and the average wage could be determined simply by dividing the value of this fund by the number of workers.
Regardless of the makeup of the fund, the obvious conclusion was that when the fund was large in relation to the number of workers, wages would be high. When it was relatively small, wages would be low. If population increased too rapidly in relation to food and other necessities (as outlined by Malthus), wages would be driven to the subsistence level. Therefore, went the speculation, labourers would be at an advantage if they contributed to the accumulation of capital to enlarge the fund; if they made exorbitant demands on employers or formed labour organizations that diminished capital, they would be reducing the size of the fund, thereby forcing wages down. It followed that legislation designed to raise wages would not be successful, for, with only a fixed fund to draw upon, higher wages for some workers could be won only at the expense of other workers.
This theory was generally accepted for 50 years by economists such as Nassau William Senior and John Stuart Mill. After 1865 the wages-fund theory was discredited by W.T. Thornton, F.D. Longe, and Francis A. Walker, all of whom argued that the demand for labour was not determined by a fund but by the consumer demand for products. Furthermore, the proponents of the wages-fund doctrine had been unable to prove the existence of any kind of fund that maintained a predetermined relationship with capital, and they also failed to identify what portion of the labour force’s contribution to a product was actually paid out in wages. Indeed, the total amount paid in wages depended upon a number of factors, including the bargaining power of labourers. Despite these telling criticisms, however, the wages-fund theory remained influential until the end of the 19th century.
