You’ve seen how workers decide how many hours to work or whether to work at all. Now let’s look at the other side: the firm. How many workers should a business hire? What stops it from just hiring more and more until it runs out of candidates? This chapter explains short‑run labor demand. In the short run, the firm’s equipment and technology are fixed; it can only change the number of workers. By the end, you’ll understand why a firm’s labor demand curve slopes down and why we say labor demand is “derived” — it comes from the demand for the firm’s product.