Voluntary Unemployment and Unemployability in Jamaica with Special Reference to the Standard of Living

N under-developed countries which are going through a process of rather rapid produciion advance, as is the case in Jamaica, it is not zunusual to find relatively extensive unemployment while at the same time employers are complaining about lack of sviitable labour. A study made in Puerto Rico in I946 showed that nearly a tenth of the potential male labour force over I4 years old were neither employed nor looking for work, and not attending school.l In Anagua it was found that half the unemployed, among a sample studied, were chronically unemployed. 'One person in four, among the unemployed, had never had employment.' 2 In Jamaica the term unemployable is frequently applied to many unemployed, although it is recognized that what is called unemployability may be simply lack of interest in getting or keeping a job. Whatever the name, from the point of view of econornic development the condiiion of being unemployed when work is available calls for explanation. Lack of response to economic incentives is staiistically measurable in cases where increases in wages have resulted in increases of unemployment, but the common opinion of economists, nevertheless, is that lack of response is not normal and is to be explained by special circumstances or is not worth any comment.3 It would be truer to say that such response is normal only in the kind of society with which we ourselves are most familiar. It is 'natural' for any people, including ourselves, to regard the responses of their own society as the normal ones for human beings generally. But the total situation with regard to under-developed peoples is confused also by the fact that there usually is some response to economic incentives within a limited range of goods, and this is

Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Political science · Sociology · Standard of living · Unemployment · Employment and Welfare Studies · Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences · Law · Taxation and Compliance Studies

• Aspiration wages, migration and urban unemployment

  Guy Standing•The Journal of Development Studies•1978

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