Urban unemployment in developing countries :Nature of the problem and proposals for its solution

The pace of urbanisation in the developing countries is now so rapid that the size of the total urban population considerably exceeds that of the active population engaged in manufacturing. This is quite unlike the situation that existed in the countries of continental Europe during the early stages of their own development: in fact, in the developing countries urbanisation is a forerunner of industrialisation and growth rather than their consequence. The result is the extremely high unemploy ment rates that characterised the towns of the Third World during the 1960s, which were at such a level that we may legitimately speak of "urban over-unemployment": 27 per cent in Algeria, 19 per cent in Burundi and Jamaica, 16 per cent in Venezuela and Surinam, 15 per cent in Colombia and Panama, 14 per cent in Sri Lanka, and so on. What are the causes underlying this state of affairs, and what measures may be put forward as a remedy? These are the two major questions

that this study attempts to answer. The author, Paul Bairoch, was Professor of Economics at the Sir George Williams University in Montreal and Assistant Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris ai the time when this study was written; he has specialised in problems concerning development and the active population, and has published many studies on these subjects.