When something is destroyed, does that actually help the economy by creating construction jobs? Do disasters like fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, or tsunamis actually stimulate job growth? Only if people were planning to light their money on fire before having to spend it on reconstruction! This is what economists call the Broken Window Fallacy.

When machines or computers are used to automate a task, does that mean that human workers will lose their jobs? As with most questions in economics, it depends. See how computers and toilet paper illustrate two different effects of technology on jobs. Overall, EconGuy shows that even when workers in one industry lose out, the economy as a whole benefits from automation and technology.

America is a nation of immigrants, who currently make up about 13 percent of the overall population. The May 2014 issue shows how immigration affects the average American. The essay weighs the costs and benefits of immigration and discusses the concept of immigrant workers as substitutes for and complements to native-born workers.

Since the CoVID19 pandemic, essential workers have been impacted beyond that of others in the labor force.  Statistics on nonmedical essential workers and how CoVid19 affects their health and livelihood are lacking. No centralized reporting exists and corporations do not either collect or provide this data. This OER attempts to bring together various sources information from March-July 2020 for future research. This material is a compilation of original sources of varying restrictions to be used for educational purposes, so I have chosen the CC BY NC ND license.

This course is designed for students seeking a fundamental understanding of Japanese history, politics, culture, and the economy. “Raw Fish 101” (as it is often labeled) combines lectures, seminar discussion, small-team case studies, and Web page construction exercises, all designed to shed light on contemporary Japan.

Data set and map pertaining to labor force participation rates for women in all countries. The World Bank specifies female labor force participation as a World Development Indicator (WDI) -- the statistical benchmark that helps measure the progress of development.

Data set and map pertaining to total labor force participation rates for all countries. The World Bank specifies labor force participation as a World Development Indicator (WDI) -- the statistical benchmark that helps measure the progress of development.

Everyday we are bombarded with the word “global” and encouraged to see globalization as the quintessential transformation of our age. But what exactly does “globalization” mean? How is it affecting the lives of people around the world, not only in economic, but social and cultural terms? How do contemporary changes compare with those from other historical periods? Are such changes positive, negative or simply inevitable? And, finally, how does the concept of the “global” itself shape our perceptions in ways that both help us understand the contemporary world and potentially distort it? This course begins by offering a brief overview of historical “world systems,” including those centered in Asia as well as Europe. It explores the nature of contemporary transformations, including those in economics, media & information technologies, population flows, and consumer habits, not through abstractions but by focusing on the daily lives of people in various parts of the world. This course considers such topics as the day-to-day impact of computers in Silicon Valley and among Tibetan refugees; the dilemmas of factory workers in the US and rural Java; the attractions of Bombay cinema in Nigeria, the making of rap music in Japan, and the cultural complexities of immigrant life in France. This course seeks not only to understand the various forms globalization takes, but to understand its very different impacts world-wide.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Depression is a global public health issue—one battled not only at home and in the clinic, but also in the workplace. In the United States alone, major depressive disorder is associated with an annual loss of 225 million workdays and more than $36 billion. While treatment should be designed to relieve depression symptoms, it should also help patients recover their social functioning, which includes their capacity to perform at work. Unfortunately, little information exists on how treatment duration or discontinuation affects impaired work functioning in people with depression. Now, a large-scale analysis of workers in Japan is helping researchers understand that relationship. The findings urge close collaboration between occupational health practitioners and psychiatrists in treating patients with impaired work functioning. Researchers surveyed more than 33,000 workers from 13 companies in Japan, all of them in manufacturing—an industry linked to a high overall occupational health risk..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

These activities will help students make connections between the foods they eat every day and the harsh experiences of the undocumented female workers who play an essential role in bringing that food to them.