Self-Sufficiency Subcomponent: Labor Market Rigidity

Support from the state to an individual can happen through either direct transfer payments and the provision of government services (as we examined above), or by regulating companies to provide workers with supports, e.g., enforcing a minimum wage or making it difficult to fire individuals. Unions can also work to protect certain workers. To the extent that these structural labor market supports limit companies from engaging with employees in a free manner (making hiring and firing decisions), it limits the need for individual self-reliance. And this approach limits the dynamism of corporations and individuals to respond to conditions—which over time should make countries with high rates of labor market rigidity grow more slowly.

国家对个人的支持可以通过直接转移支付和提供政府服务（如上文所述），或通过规范公司向工人提供支持，例如执行最低工资或使其难以照射个人。工会也可以努力保护某些工人。在这些结构性劳动力市场支持下限制公司与员工自由接触（招聘和解雇）的情况下，限制了个人自力更生的需要。而这种做法限制了企业和个人对条件作出反应的动力 - 随着时间的推移，劳动力市场刚性高的国家的增长速度将会越来越慢。

We measure labor market rigidity by looking at unionization rates across countries, minimum wages, and limits to hiring and firing at will in a given economy. Unlike hard work or government supports, these measures tend to be fairly unrelated to a country's wealth and stage of development (which we proxy with income levels).

我们通过查看各国的工会化率，最低工资以及在特定经济体内的任意招聘和限制来衡量劳动力市场的僵化度。与艰苦的工作或政府支持不同，这些措施往往与一个国家的财富和发展阶段（我们以收入水平代替）相当无关。

On our aggregate measure of labor force rigidity, Singapore, India and the US rank as having the least rigid labor forces, followed by Mexico. Argentina and Italy score especially poorly along this measure. Within the developed world, Japan and peripheral Europe appear to have some of the more rigid labor markets. It's also interesting to note that China appears to have a fairly rigid labor market, which is generally the exception (most other measures indicate that China has a high degree of self-sufficiency). Since labor force rigidity isn't particularly related to a county's stage of development, excluding income's effect has little impact on the rankings.

在我们劳动强度总量的测算中，新加坡，印度和美国的劳动力劳动力最少，其次是墨西哥。阿根廷和意大利在这一措施上的得分尤为差。在发达国家，日本和外围的欧洲似乎有一些更加僵化的劳动力市场。还有趣的是，中国似乎有一个相当僵化的劳动力市场，这通常是例外（大多数其他措施表明中国的自给自足）。由于劳动力刚性与县的发展阶段并不相关，不包括收入效应对排名影响不大。