By the mobility of labor we mean the ease or difficulty with which it is moved from one place to another or from one occupation to another. Over a short period of time labor is not mobile. For a difference of a cent a bushel over the cost of transportation wheat is readily shunted from one market to another many miles distant. The laborer, on the other hand, who has a family does not move so readily in response to wage changes. In the first place, the breaking up of his housekeeping in one place and the starting in another involves much annoyance and confusion and expense. But more than this he and his family have made friends in the old home and are disinclined to leave them and to begin as strangers in a new home. They will prefer to accept a somewhat lower wage in the old place rather than make the change.

But there is a second kind of immobility which is even harder to overcome in many instances than the one already cited. This is the immobility which prevents the worker from moving from one occupation to another. In the more skilled occupations the workers may be highly efficient in their own lines of work but totally inefficient in other lines. Here considerable variations in wages could exist in the different occupations without drawing an appreciable supply of labor from one occupation to another. In one occupation wages might be high because of the relative scarcity of labor as compared with the demand for it, and in a neighboring trade wages might be low because of an oversupply of labor as compared with the demand for it. So while the law of supply and demand would regulate wages within the individual occupation it would seem that here it would not regulate wages between the two occupations. In the long run, however, there will be a tendency to even out these inequalities in wages.

While labor may not be mobile at a given time with regard to its movement from place to place or from trade to trade, there is a tendency for the younger generation of workers to enter the trades which offer the best rewards, and to refrain from entering the trades where wages are relatively low. It is further true that while the laborers do not like to leave in a body to move from a place of low wages to a place of high wages, over a long period of time families and individuals will make the change and the tendency will be for the flow of labor to be towards the place of high wages and away from the place of low wages. Therefore, considering long periods of time there is a tendency for competition to even out the difference in wages in different places and occupations.

204. Competitive Wages Are Not Equal Wages

Since different workers have different capacities for work the tendency of competition is not to make all wages equal for all workers but to make wages unequal and in proportion to the productivity of the workers. Employers will naturally be willing to pay a higher wage in order to secure the more capable workmen. In so far, then, as competition has free sway, wages will tend to be unequal for workers of different capacities.