Labor demand and labor supply?

[hwistlere31]

If there are less job availabilities, does that mean that labor supply has increased or decreased? Also, does that mean that labor demand has increased or decreased? I'm having such a difficult time understanding the way that the laws of labor supply and demand work. Please help.

[darik2]

In a little bit simplified way:

Labor supply: the amount of laborers (workers) available in an economy. Basically, the number of people who are willing to work. Their number might increase if wages go up, or if there is a population boom due to higher birth rates or immigration. It refers to the labor that is supplied by the workers

Labor demand: the amount of laborers that companies actually need. The number of this depends on economic activity. In a healthy economy companies need more workers than in a bad economy. Obviously when you can sell more cars (= good economy), you'll need to manufacture more cars and you'll need more employees to produce those cars (= higher demand for labor).
Or when wages go up, labor becomes more expensive, then labor demand might go down as companies try to economize and be more efficient (have fewer workers manage the same amount of work) or they outsource to other countries with lower wages. In other words, this is the amount of labor that is demaned by the employers.

If labor supply is higher than labor demand at a certain time, then there will be a labor surplus. This will lead to unemployment and lower wages.

If labor supply is lower than labor demand, then there will be a labor shortage. This means increasing wages in the labor market, but also a difficulty for companies to hire employees.

[barraq]

ya to pronounce gyro
factoring -x^2 = y^2 + 2
scientific but and graphing