Labour Intensive

Labour-intensive •

‘Labour’ refers to the people required to carry out a process in a business.

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Labour-intensive processes are those that require a relatively high level of labour compared to capital investment.

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These processes are more likely to be used to produce individual or personalised products, or to produce on a small scale

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The costs of labour are: wages and other benefits, recruitment, training and so on.

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Some flexibility in capacity may be available by use of overtime and temporary staff, or by laying-off workers.

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Long-term growth depends on being able to recruit sufficient suitable staff.

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Labour intensive processes are more likely to be seen in Job production and in smallerscale enterprises.