wage labor
Work for pay
Wage labor is a system of work where people sell their time and effort to employers in exchange for regular payment, rather than owning the means of production themselves or working independently.
The term often appears in economic and political discussions, particularly Marxist analysis, where it describes the fundamental relationship between workers and capital.
Most modern economies are built on wage labor.
Someone engaged in this arrangement is a wage laborer.
- proletariatLaborers lacking capital ownership
- working classManual laborers collectively
- reserve armyBackup military personnel
- gig economyWork based on temporary contracts
- precarityState of persistent vulnerability
at-will employment · surplus value · exploitation · class struggle · deskilling · socialism · Marxism · capitalism · take-home pay · economic inequality · neoliberalism · Fordism · factory floor · shop floor · blue-collar · sweat shop · overtime · nine to five
- labor systemschattel slavery, debt bondage, indentured servitude, manorialism, peonage
- laborwork, workers, hard work, employment, effort
- livelihoodsjob, career, work, income, profession
- class struggleclass conflict, class warfare, class divide, class struggle, class consciousness
- Gilded AgeGilded Age, robber baron, robber barons, Carnegie, Rockefeller
- labor fictionfactory workers, working class, workers, coal miners, factory life
wage laborself-employment
Working for yourself
entrepreneurship · business ownership · freelancing · independent work · independent contractor
wage labordividend income
Earnings from share ownership
rental income · piece work · passive income · profit-sharing · profit-taking
wage laborslavery
Ownership of people
serfdom · indentured servitude · chattel slavery · collective farming · gift economy
labor, wage, wages, laborer, labored, laboring, wager, laborers, laborious