On-The-Job Training

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On-The-Job Training

Much of the usable labor market skills that workers possess are not acquired

through formal schooling but rather through on-the-job training. Such

training may be somewhat formal; that is, workers may undertake a struc-

tural trainee program or an apprenticeship program. On the other hand,

on-the-job training is often highly informal and therefore difficult to measure

or even detect. Less-experienced workers often engage in ”learning by doing”;

they acquire new skills simply by observing more-skilled workers, filling in for

them when they are ill or on vacation, or engaging in informal conversation

during coffee breaks.

1.1 Costs and Benefits

Like formal education, on-the-job training entails present sacrifices and fu-

ture benefits. It thus is an investment in human capital and can be analyzed

through the net present value and internal rate of return frameworks. In de-

ciding whether to provide on-the-job training, a firm will weigh the expected

added revenues generated by the training against the costs of providing it.

If the net present value of the training investment is positive, the firm will

invest; if negative, it won’t. Alternatively, the firm will invest if the internal

rate of return of the investment exceeds the interest cost of borrowing.

For employers, providing training may involve direct costs as classroom

instruction or increased worker supervision, along with such indirect costs

as reduced worker output during the training period. Workers may have to

accept the cost of lower wages during the training period. The potential

benefit to the firm is that a trained workforce will be more productive and

will therefore make greater contributions to the firm’s total revenue. Sim...

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equality with the posttrainig marginal revenue product–that the employer

will normally not be willing to pay for general training. The employer has

no opportunity to obtain a return on its training investment by paying a

wage rate less than the worker’s marginal revenue product. Why should the

employer bear general training costs when the benefits accrue to solely to the

trained employee in the form of higher wages? To repeat: The worker pays

for general training costs by accepting a wage below that of the untrained

worker (Wt as compared to Wu) during the training period. Incidentally, the

fact that competition will bid a worker’s wage rate up into equality with his

or her higher post training marginal revenue product (MRPp), and thereby

preclude a return to the employer, explains why general education typically

occurs in schools and not on the job.

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