Looking for Work, Searching for Workers
American Labor Markets during Industrialization

This book examines the history of institutional changes in US labor markets during industrialization.

Joshua L. Rosenbloom (Author)

9780521807807, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 April 2002

224 pages, 14 b/w illus. 25 tables
23.7 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.434 kg

'Rosenbloom develops a number of … important themes in his carefully researched and rigorously argued book … the author of Looking for Work, Searching for Workers rightfully takes his place as the leading authority on labour markets during America's industrial coming of age.' Business History

The dynamic character of American industrialization produced imbalances between the supply of and demand for labor across cities and regions. This book describes how employers and job-seekers responded to these imbalances to create networks of labor market communication and assistance capable of mobilizing the massive redistribution of population that was essential to maintain the rapid pace of the nation's economic growth between the Civil War and World War I. It combines a detailed description of the emerging labor market institutions with a careful analysis of a variety of quantitative evidence to assess the broader economic implications for geographic wage convergence and for American economic growth. Despite an expansion in the geographic scope of labor markets at this time, the evidence suggests that labor market institutions reinforced regional divisions within the United States and left a lasting impact on the evolution of many other aspects of the employment relationship.

1. Labor markets and American industrialization
2. Job seekers, employers, and the creation of labor market institutions
3. Employment agencies and labor exchanges: this impact of intermediaries in the market for labor
4. Markets for skilled labor: external recruitment and the development of internal labor markets
5. One market or many? Inter-city and inter-regional labor market integration
6. Labor market integration and the use of strikebreakers
7. Labor market institutions and American economic growth: lessons from the nineteenth century.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]