LEDC Update
Linden gets busier by the day. September has a full docket for our little village and is looking to roll on into even more down the road. By the time this article is published, we’ll have had our 2nd Annual Cass County Veterans’ Salute, we’ll be looking forward to September 14th when we light the historic water tower downtown at sundown, and the weekend after that is homecoming for LKISD.
While these events keep us busy in the here and now, there are just as many long-term endeavors being undertaken that will go toward ushering Linden into a successful future as well.
One such endeavor that we need to be working towards is reforming the labor market for our area. Labor market reform is a deeply complex topic, and as a goal, it doesn’t have any quick or simple means of achieving it.
However, I firmly believe that it is a goal that we must ardently, continuously, and creatively pursue if we are to see true economic success in our region. Before I lose myself down the rabbit hole of labor market reform, let’s take this article to lay out what defines a labor market and explore why its perceived quality is important to a region’s economy.
A labor market is the collective group of workers that can participate in valuable labor in a region and the availability of jobs for said workers.
A handy, economic way of looking at the concept is through the lens of supply and demand. At a single point in time, all the jobs that are available in a particular place represent the demand for labor in that region and all of the potential employees who are able to fill those positions represent the supply of labor.
The relationship between this supply and demand can be effected by any number of “shocks” (external forces acting on the system) such as a new factory opening (causing demand for labor to go up) or a mass exodus of the region’s populous (causing supply to go down).
The existence of a labor market is a given for any area that has business and a need for workers, but the quality of that labor market is subject to any and all shocks that affect supply. For instance, basic demographics are a primary supply shock seen when analyzing labor markets.
If a particular populous has an abundance of older laborers, these workers might have more experience to bring to the table for employers, but they may not possess the physicality needed to maintain certain jobs.
On the other hand, if a market has a preponderance of young workers (like a college town), they may not have the necessary experience for higher echelon occupations.
While a basic demographic like age makes a great example for a supply shock in a labor market, the supply of labor can be affected by a multitude of much more complicated factors.
Mobility, or the distance that an average employee can commute to their occupation, is a factor that greatly affects our labor market as well. Linden’s central location in northeast Texas makes it a prime case study for the effects of mobility.
Citizens of our city may use the network of state and federal highways that link us to other larger cities to commute to work outside of our municipality.
By that same principle, when a business looks at Linden as a potential site for location, they will be drawing from a much larger area than just our city for employees.
There are volumes to be written on this subject and I intend to discuss it through this medium more in the future. However, for the time being, I’ll leave you with a critical factor to keep in mind when learning about or discussing our area’s availability of jobs, its unemployment rates, and its labor market as a whole.
What stands to benefit our neighbors in regards to any of these factors, stands to benefit us. No solution to any problem revolving around labor can be solved by a single community unit acting alone. When opportunities arise to better educate and equip our workforce, we must work together to pursue them lest we risk losing them and setting ourselves back.