Our story today is about specialization in the labor market.

Exciting, right?

It's about one almost invisible job inside a highly visible profession that happens to be

in the limelight this week with Super Bowl 56.

Let's start by asking what is specialization exactly?

Specialization is one of the things that makes us rich.

That's Victor Matheson.

I'm a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross.

I specialize in all things sports economics.

What does Matheson mean when he says that specialization makes us rich?

This goes all the way back to Adam Smith.

Adam Smith said that specialization is the royal road to prosperity because if people

specialize, they can really get good at something.

Adam Smith's famous example was about pin making, you know, like straight pins that

you put in a shirt.

And he said, look, 10 people in a factory making pins, not very exciting job, but if they

can each specialize on 10 different aspects of how you make a pin, a group of 10 workers

in a factory in one day could make 48,000 pins.

That means 4,800 pins per worker.

While each of these individual workers, if they had to make these pins on their own, they

be lucky to make maybe 20.

Victor Matheson has his own favorite example of specialization.

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