This chapter focuses on one particular set of variables, those involving the economic circumstances of speakers and language communities, and explores their implications for the tasks of arresting and reversing language shift. The fundamental shapers of the fortunes of endangered languages are economic in the narrower sense: people change their linguistic behaviours, including shifting from one language to another, most typically because of real or perceived or desired changes in their material circumstances. The chapter discusses some of the more usual causes and forms of economic disruption which affect endangered language communities. Whether multilingualism is inherently unstable even in the absence of socioeconomic inequalities among speakers is in part still an open question, though there are instances of bilingual communities which have persisted over centuries. The chapter concludes by considering prospects, strategies and challenges in addressing the economic dimensions of language endangerment.