Labor Market Quotes

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result?

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

In the United States, resources exist to retrain displaced workers and promote the development of technologies that create new job opportunities for American workers.

The first duty of this government is to give the workers work.

Economically, long-term joblessness means fewer dollars for consumption. For deficit control, it means fewer taxpayers contributing to government revenues and tens of billions more spent on unemployment insurance.

To be sure, India has achieved enviable success in business services, like the glistening call centers in Bangalore and elsewhere. But in the global jousting for manufacturing jobs, India does not get its share.

For me, it is all about people having jobs, and that is why I make no apology for having focused relentlessly on employment and job creation.

Every step that produces a single job for a currently unemployed European should be taken. Every centimetre of red tape that puts someone out of work must be torn up.

Obama is a president, who I think is anti-jobs.

The first thing you do is don't let the jobs leave. The companies are leaving.

I'm very much of the opinion that to work is better than not to work.

If the price of a burger goes up 5 cents, and the minimum wage that you have received is going up from $7.25 to $15 an hour - and there have been a number of studies that document just how much the price of a burger might go up if you increase the minimum wage. You match the costs, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

To assert, as some have, that illegal immigrants do not depress wages because they do the jobs Americans refuse is the kind of nonsense economists speak when they strain to be counterintuitive. It is similar to saying that cheap imports do not hold down prices.

In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

The American economy must be altered to put business back in the driver's seat. The correct role for finance is to support job creation.

I think it's important to focus on our economy, on jobs, on getting America back to work.

Gov. Perry has led the way in Texas on creating an environment for job growth.

When illegal labor is used, that almost always depresses wages paid to all workers. The illegal workers can be exploited, and they will usually accept lower wages. As a result, all workers in the plant, including U.S. citizens, will see their wages go down.

I feel we should be able … to find a way of employing more of these so-called unemployables

Immigration isn't always good for the economy or jobs.

As America's head coach, President Obama needs to make some big and smart adjustments to jump-start economic growth and business investment, stimulate job creation, and get wages up for ordinary Americans.

What we're concerned about is massive immigration of unskilled workers, mostly from the Maghreb and Africa, which pulls down salaries in France.