In country X unemployment constitutes a national crisis. According to the Central Statistical Office of this country, in 1999, using the expanded definition that counts as unemployed every adult who wanted and would take a job immediately, some 36 percent of the working population were unemployed, compared to 32 per cent in 1994.
By the narrower official definition, which takes into account only those still actively seeking work, unemployment was still very high, at 23 per cent in 1999.
In the last three years alone, between 1997 and 2000, one tenth of formal jobs disappeared. According to the Central Bank, in 1999 formal employment in country X was at "a level broadly similar to that of the late 1970s"
The million jobs lost in the past fifteen years wiped out all the gains in employment creation over the decade before that. Even when the economy grew, as in the mid-90s and the past year, the formal sector continued to lose jobs.
The 1999 October Household Survey suggested that the employment situation improved in 1998-99. Unfortunately, these data display worrying inconsistencies.
Even at face value, they show that informal jobs continued to replace formal ones.
The survey counts any income-earning activity, no matter how poverty stricken or instable, as informal employment.
Most of the jobs created will not sustain longer-term development, in the sense of providing an income high enough to support a family, the acquisition of skills or rising productivity. From this standpoint, they are rather a form of concealed unemployment.
Labour put forward a set of proposals to the Presidential Job Summit. Those proposals are still supported. This document essentially aims to summarize the broad strategy underlying those proposals.
Organized labour believes that large-scale structural interventions are needed to put country X on a job-creating trajectory, which will also bring the majority into the economic mainstream, and through redistribution of assets and resources, thereby laying the basis for a new growth path.
(a) Define the term "Sustainable development".
(b) Explain fully four monetary measures which will help to create jobs in country X.
(c) Explain two fiscal measures which will affect either positively or negatively job creation.
(d) Apart from fiscal and monetary policies that you have mentioned at (b) and (c) above, explain two other policies that the government of country X may apply in order to create jobs
(e) Discuss and explain how training and development may be advantageous to country X.