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Job creation is the most important challenge facing Egypt today. Economic performance has been uneven over the last three decades, but even in periods of high growth, the job content of growth has not been strong enough to absorb new entrants. The 1990s and early 2000s saw the acceleration in the structural adjustments. The fast growing role of the private sector and the contraction of public sector employment are considered the most important characteristics of this period. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The findings of the paper support the view that sectoral shifts, in response to structural transformations, have been an important source of private employment fluctuations in Egypt, and the implications on aggregate employment have varied with the stage of the business cycle in the private sector. Moreover, one of the important findings of the paper shows that public sectoral shifts have caused stronger effects on private employment growth than private sectoral shifts do. However, failure to align public sectoral shifts with growth in the private sector has had a negative effect on employment growth, increasing aggregate unemployment.

The findings also confirm the crowding-out effect of higher government expenditure on private employment, particularly during a boom. Finally, the findings show that changes in domestic credit going to the private sector as a ratio of private GDP, and higher exports ratio to GDP have statistically significant positive effects on private employment growth.

Overall, the findings signify the importance of policies that aim at increasing the job content of private-led growth in Egypt.

This paper aims to analyse the observed “jobless growth” between 1993-1994 and 2011-2012 based on structural transformation to explain why the elasticity of employment generation to gross domestic product growth has declined during this period.

This paper uses the job generation and growth decomposition tool to quantify the effects of inter-sectoral mobility of workers, intra-sectoral productivity changes and demographic changes on per capita value added growth. Alternative scenarios are generated to simulate the effect of higher female labour participation rates.

Structural transformation in India between 1993-1994 and 2011-2012 was characterised by increasing labour productivity in most sectors, inter-sectoral mobility of workers and a decline in the employment rate. About 81 per cent of the increase in per capita value added was because of a rise in labour productivity; about 24 per cent was because of inter-sectoral shifts of labour; and about 9 per cent because of demographic changes. The decline in the employment rate had a negative effect of −14.20 per cent. The process of transformation was unconventional. First, labour productivity growth was the highest in the service sector and second, the bulk of the movement of labour was to the construction sector.

This paper focusses only on the quantitative dimensions of employment and offers no new explanations why female labour force participation declined.

This paper offers a new perspective on the debate of jobless growth focussing on structural transformation.

We have used the Michigan computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of World Production and Trade to calculate the aggregate welfare and sectoral employment effects of the menu of U.S.–Japan trade policies. The menu of policies encompasses the various preferential U.S. and Japan bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) negotiated and in process, unilateral removal of existing trade barriers by the two countries, and global (multilateral) free trade. The U.S. preferential agreements include the FTAs approved by the U.S. Congress with Chile and Singapore in 2003, those signed with Central America, Australia, and Morocco and awaiting Congressional approval in 2004, and prospective FTAs with the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), Thailand, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The Japanese preferential agreements include the bilateral FTA with Singapore signed in 2002 and prospective FTAs with Chile, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, and Thailand. The welfare impacts of the FTAs on the United States and Japan are shown to be rather small in absolute and relative terms. The sectoral employment effects are also generally small in the United States and Japan, but vary across the individual sectors depending on the patterns of the bilateral liberalization. The welfare effects on the FTA partner countries are mostly positive though generally small, but there are some indications of potentially disruptive employment shifts in some partner countries. There are indications of trade diversion and detrimental welfare effects on nonmember countries for some of the FTAs analyzed. Data limitations precluded analysis of the welfare effects of the different FTA rules of origin and other discriminatory arrangements.

In comparison with the welfare gains from the U.S. and Japan bilateral FTAs, the gains from both unilateral trade liberalization by the United States, Japan, and the FTA partners and global (multilateral) free trade are shown to be rather substantial and more uniformly positive for all countries in the global trading system. The U.S. and Japan FTAs are based on “hub” and “spoke” arrangements. We show that the spokes emanate out in different and often overlapping directions, suggesting that the complex of bilateral FTAs may create distortions of the global trading system.

Over recent decades both Europe and the United States have experienced an increase in the share of service-related jobs in total employment. Although narrowing in all European countries, a significant gap in the share of service jobs relative to the United States still persists. The aim of the chapter is to identify the main drivers of the service sector employment share in the EU-15 as well as its gap relative to the United States. The analysis is carried out for the aggregate service sector, 4 sub-sectors and 12 service sector branches over the period 1970–2003. We find some evidence to support the hypothesis that a number of labour market regulations – such as union density and the degree of centralisation of wage bargaining – together with the mismatch between workers' skills and job vacancies, have affected Europe's ability to adjust efficiently to the reallocation of labour from manufacturing into services. Furthermore, we find significant heterogeneity in the relative weight of the various determinants of the employment share across sub-sectors and branches.

It is commonly argued that many economies must look toward a service‐based future. This article discusses the role of the service sector in generating economic growth and employment. It is argued that defining, measuring and distinguishing service output as opposed to output of goods has become increasingly difficult, which makes the traditional attempts to define a specific role for the service sector more or less futile. Instead, the diverse activities performed within the service sector form an integral part of a well‐functioning economy as a whole. Moreover, there is nothing inherently “wrong” with service sector jobs: recent experience suggests that the service sector has generated disproportionately both good quality, well‐paid jobs, as well as those in the lowest category. Worrying about the relative size of the service sector helps us little: what matters is each sector’s contribution to overall productivity growth.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The secular transformation in Irish sectoral employment shares, which has been stimulated by the change in focus of both Irish industrial and trade policies, mirrors the significant changes that have occurred in international structures of production. Estimates the contribution of changes in Ireland’s sectoral employment structure to labour productivity convergence between Ireland and the EU average from 1970‐1990. Identifies the variation in Irish sectoral employment distribution over time as a significant source of labour productivity convergence. Ireland’s labour productivity convergence was 0.3 per cent per annum higher as a result of shifts in Irish employment distribution than would have occurred without changes in the structure of Irish employment.

Provides an evaluation of the reality of the German economy after unification, also answers to some of the questions that the post‐unification era has raised, analyzes aggregate and sectoral data of the former GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany over the period 1970‐1989. The results characterize the former GDR with a steeper supply curve. While the central plan assumed a steady growth of real output over time, it eliminated producers’ incentives to vary capacity utilization in response to demand pressures. Demand pressures proved inflationary without determining conditions in the labor market. In contrast, the market‐oriented plan in West Germany tied output expansion and contraction with demand fluctuations. Consequently, inflationary effects of demand fluctuations appeared moderate in West Germany and real output growth was not sustained at a high level over time. Demand fluctuations determined employment changes in West Germany. Implications of these differences are analyzed in light of the reality of the post‐unification in Germany.