Supply And Demand
Economics, supply and demand In the article we
find that teenagers have the
oppertunity to be demanding about their salary
in the baby sitting field,
because the amount of babysitters today are
scarce. The babysitting population,
teenagers, find themselves busy with
school, part time jobs, and extracirricular
activity. Teenagers with drivers
licenses are even more scarce than those with
out, all in all, It's hard to
find a babysitter. Times have changed, just twenty
years ago there were 33
million children who needed to be watched, and 39
million babysitters(age 10
- 19), recent polls suggest that children that need
to be watched raised 18
percent to 39 million while baby sitters dropped 5
percent to 37 million. The
rise in children coupled with American families
spending more time out then
years ago, has allowed the babysitters to set their
price with out haggeling.
Baby sitters are making well over the federal minimum
wage of $5.15 an hour
because they are in demand, and scarce; the babysitters
who train in CPR,
serve dinner, and drive are the hardest to come by and can
demand the highest
wages. In this article we see many examples of supply and
damand and the
powers of supply and demand. Babysitters are in demand, there is
an increase
in the amount of children who need to be watched yet there are
relativly few
who choose to babysit from the allready decreased amount of the
babysitter
work force. This gives the babysitter the advantage of a
noncompetitive work
force, allowing the baby sitter to set the price with out
bargaining. If we
were to compare two different production possibility
frontiers, we would see
a left shift of the curve while demand for baby sitters
rises, from 1980 to
1996. In economics we concider this an inflation, the amount
of
resources(babysitters) decreased while the demand for them rose. This is
what
we would concider the begining of an econic problem because the
resources are
scarce. This resulted in an increase of price for that service.
We also see that
the most experienced, oldest, responcible, and best trained
babysitters set the
highest prices by up to 60% from a "novice" sallery of $4
to a
"expert" sallery of $10 and consumers are willing to pay. A
consumer
is willing to pay that extra $6 an hour for the piece of mind they
get when they
go out and know that their children are being attending to in
the best possible
way, much like a consumer is willing to by name brand
products for a higher
price because they just "feel" like its better. In the
next two or
three years the work force of the babysitters will grow, and so
will the number
of people under the age of 10, this will show a steady PPC
with no signs of
relief for the consumer. This article shows the power of
supply and demand. 20
years ago when children under the age of 10 and baby
sitters age 10-19 were both
fewer, we saw more competition between the baby
sitters resulting in price
decreases. Today with fewer baby sitters, all with
busy scheduals, and more
young children we see the damand increase resulting
in an increase of price.