MANY of the candidates in Jamaica's upcoming General Election are promising to tackle unemployment, by seeking to promote economic growth, to generate new investments in their constituency and to build factories.

Now unemployment might stand shoulder-to-shoulder with crime as one of the major problems that this country is trying to overcome, so since crime is harder to contain, it is admirable that cutting unemployment is seen as the most desirable endeavour. They may be unaware of a new trend called 'jobless growth' that is as applicable to Jamaica as to other developing and developed countries.

In the past when economic growth was generated, this meant that the area, from which such investments were based, could look forward to some amount to job linkages (direct and indirect) and persons flowed to these areas to secure jobs. In Jamaica, one can look at the bauxite sector, then the tourist sector and even the garment/apparel sector. Jobs of all levels and skills were easily available and job opportunities were prevalent, even in the bauxite sector that was more capital-intensive than labour-intensive.

Global manufacturing trends, incorporating highly-automated plants and robotisation of key product processes have led to widespread labour redundancies and global production specialisation, that have ended this labour expansion. Today, manufacturing plants of whatever type, have had to be 'lean and mean' to be cost-competitive with global rivals, in order to deliver easily affordable products. Firms no longer look to cheap labour as the major cost savings in deciding on plant location.

This has led to what has been called 'jobless growth', where economic growth takes place but without any commensurate growth in employment levels and, even in some instances, job losses. Employers require existing employees to do more, or even trade job stability for wage containment.

Where employment expansion has taken place, it has largely been in the service sector (e.g. telecommunication and personal services) where particular skills and products are being demanded. We should therefore bear this in mind before we promise to generate jobs, since barring large scale government (state capitalism) expansion, the days of large employment providers are over. Tourism for instance has to tread carefully worldwide in the wake of September 11, 2001 and possible US attacks on Iraq, which disrupts American travel. To generate employment nowadays since we cannot look towards the Government (given the need to curb its fiscal expenditure), it must come from small scale entrepreneurial activity of whatever type.

We do a dis-service to others if we fail to point out this new phenomenon of jobless growth and explain that large scale employment is likely to have gone the way of the dinosaur.