cheap labor
Low-wage workers
Cheap labor is workers paid low wages, typically in contexts where employers seek to minimize costs.
The phrase often carries critical connotations, implying exploitation or unfair working conditions: Companies moved factories overseas in search of cheap labor.
It appears in debates about immigration, globalization, and economic policy, where critics argue that reliance on cheap labor undercuts domestic workers or perpetuates poverty.
- sweatshopExploitative manufacturing workplace
- exploitationSelfish use of others
- human traffickingCriminal trade in people
- outsourcingThird-party task delegation
- race to the bottomCompetition through degraded standards
minimum wage · migrant workers · work visa · factory · manufacturing · underpaid · under the table · cash in hand · overtime · assembly line · garment · offshore · third world · working poor · poverty · immigrants · plantations · unskilled
- business location factorsnatural resources, tax breaks, skilled workforce, infrastructure, proximity
- exploitationexploit, predatory, sex trafficking, take advantage, human trafficking
- neocolonialismneocolonialism, debt trap, resource extraction, economic exploitation, foreign debt
- laborwork, workers, hard work, employment, effort
- tradetrade balance, free trade, trade barriers, customs, trade deficit
- globalizationglobalization, free trade, global village, global trade, multinationals
cheap laborskilled labor
Trained professional work
knowledge workers · professional expertise · master craftsmen · brain trust
cheap, labor, cheaper, cheapest, cheaply, cheapness, cheapen, cheapened, cheapening