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Wisconsin Economic Standard D.8.9 Income

Explain why the earning power of workers depends on their productivity and the market value of what they produce

Economic Concepts
Labor income  ||  Productivity

Links to Content Information

	Bureau of Labor Statistics - Statistical information about many aspects of labor, earnings, employment and unemployment, and much much more.
	The DataZone - EPI (Economic Policy Institute) launches the Quarterly Wage and Employment Series, a current, detailed analysis of wage and employment trends in the Current Populations Survey, released quarterly as data becomes available.
	Employment Briefing Room - Description: This is a collection of easy-to-read charts with current information on U.S. employment in the Civilian Labor Force, Unemployment, Non Farm Payrolls, and Productivity.
	Learning and Earning - Does school really pay off? The answer is an unequivocal YES! One of the largest factors in determining your future earnings is the amount of school you have completed.
	Quarterly Labor Productivity
	Real Earnings - From the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

Links to Lesson Plans and other Suggested Teaching Strategies

	Baseball Economics 101 - Grades 6-8. Students will use economic reasoning to determine whether or not Major League Baseball players are overpaid.
	The Economics of Professional Sports: If You Build It, Will They Come? - The activities in this lesson are designed to help students understand why economists generally oppose subsidies for sport franchises and why subsidies may make political sense even if they do not make economic sense.
	Homer Price (the Doughnuts) - Grades 4-6.  Homer's Uncle's newest capital resource, the doughnut machine, goes on a rampage making hundreds of doughnuts. Learn about economics: capital resources, increasing productivity, law of demand, quantity demanded.
	The Real McCoy - Grades 4-6.  Elijah McCoy was an African-American inventor who successfully designed an automatic oil cup that may have inspired the popular phrase, "the real McCoy." Learn about increasing productivity and patents.
	Widget Production: Producing More, Using Less (A lesson extension for "Widget Production.") Students then search the web for examples of the many ways productivity has been increased over the years. Students can listen to an interview with Adam Silver about increasing productivity and its importance to them. Finally, they identify a situation where an increase in productivity could alleviate a problem and create a way to solve this problem analyzing the costs and benefits.

List of Curricular Materials and Learning Activities

	Master Curriculum Guide in Economics: Teaching Strategies 5-6 from Economics America (search catalogue), available from Economics Wisconsin.  Unit 3, Lesson 7:  The T-Rrific T's Company: Production Decisions - Students help the managers of a T-shirt company make business decisions about the production process.  They analyze the costs and benefits of investing in new capital equipment in order to increase productivity.
	The Community Publishing Company - Grades 3-5.  In this series of 33 lessons, students explore their communities, then write reports, form a publishing company, and manufacture and sell their book. Through this involving and motivating program, students learn economic concepts: scarcity, opportunity cost and trade-offs, productivity, economic institutions and incentives, exchange, money, and interdependence, markets and prices, supply and demand.  From Economics America (search catalogue), available from Economics Wisconsin.
	Economics for the Elementary Classroom by Elaine C. Coulson and Sarapage McCorkle, 1982. St. Louis, MO: SPEC Publishers.  The following lessons for grades 2-6:      * Widget Production - pp. 181-184      * Too Many Cooks - pp. 185-189      * Extra Cost of Too Many Cooks - pp. 190-194      * Creative Toy Production - pp. 195-198      * Classroom Job Supply - pp. 216-220      * Earning an Income - pp. 260-269
	Virtual Economics: An Interactive Center for Economic Education, Version 2 - Each exhibit includes teaching tips, background information, a list of lessons, and video and audio clips that give additional information about the topic.  Available from Economics America (search catalogue).  In section Fundamental Economics, see exhibits:  Exhange, Money and Interdependence Productivity
	Economics and the Environment: Eco-Detectives, from Economics America (search catalogue), available from Economics Wisconsin. Lesson 10:  Why Do Nonrenewable Resources Keep Increasing? - Students generalize about the effect of incentives on the amount of petroleum available to the public.  pp.68-76

National Content Standard 13.

Scroll down the linked page to locate the grade 8 benchmarks.

Email an expert

Professor Jim Grunloh, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh