In practice, we use the term “labor market” because those words tend to go together, but if we take a moment to stop and imagine it was an actual “market” it would be a pretty crappy one. Imagine walking into a grocery store and milk was priced as “between $5 and $15”. You need to haggle on the final number. And that’s if you’re lucky to live in a state where prices have to be posted at all! You also don’t really know what’s in it. There is also considerable investment whether or not you end up liking the price. (Imagine you have to stand in line for an hour before you can even begin haggling.)
Anyone who has applied for a job knows that switching companies isn’t free, as it would be in a “free market”. There’s any number of outside factors that could prevent it. And switching too often is also viewed negatively, which is not true of e.g. shares of Amazon.
I think this image hits the nail on the head. Only thing missing is that markets will only sell to you if you live within an hours commute so you may need to move having to a different city, leaving friends/family behind to even try if the milk at another market is worth it. And sometimes the milk turns out to be orange juice...
could not disagree more. Switching jobs in tech is literally free pay raise. top tier tech worker can jump jobs every 2 years and get ~30% bump every time. You are actually leaving money on the table if you dont switch jobs (in tech specifically) - because jobs are comparable to each other.
Anyone who has applied for a job knows that switching companies isn’t free, as it would be in a “free market”. There’s any number of outside factors that could prevent it. And switching too often is also viewed negatively, which is not true of e.g. shares of Amazon.