
6.1 AQA A-Level Economics:** Labour Demand and Marginal Revenue Product**
Enquiry: How does a firm decide whether another worker is worth employing?
Why would a business employ another worker—and how does it know when to stop? This enquiry-led lesson helps students construct the labour-demand model through business decisions, calculations and guided questioning.
Includes a detailed, slide-by-slide teacher guide to support non-specialists and teachers new to A-level Economics. The guide explains the economic reasoning behind each stage, provides suggested questions and expected responses, and highlights common misconceptions. It supports both lesson preparation and classroom delivery, particularly when explaining marginal revenue product and the profit-maximising employment rule.
Beginning with a café manager’s hiring dilemma, students investigate the additional output and revenue generated by another worker. They calculate marginal physical product and marginal revenue product, connect diminishing marginal returns to the shape of the labour-demand curve, and justify hiring decisions.
Students then construct a labour-demand schedule and curve before applying their understanding to changes in product demand, technology, training and wages. Independent scenarios require students to explain the economic mechanism and draw the appropriate diagram—not simply identify a movement or shift.
Resources included: editable PowerPoint and detailed Word teacher guide, with retrieval, worked calculations, independent application and a misconception-check plenary. Slide-based tasks can be completed in exercise books.
Designed for Year 2 students with prior knowledge of productivity, diminishing returns and marginal revenue.
Specification focus: AQA 4.1.6.1 — The demand for labour, marginal productivity theory.
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