CEPAL Review - Volume 1984, Issue 24, 1984

The concept of the productive absorption of labour is a central aspect of ECLAC’S analyses, since one of the main challenges of development is to provide productive employment for the unemployed and underemployed labour force, which is deprived of work through the use of more modern methods of production, and is constantly increasing owing to population growth.

One of the central aspects of development is the process whereby the penetration of technical progress into primary activities expels manpower, most of which has to be absorbed by urban economic activities.

On the basis of statistical information partly obtained from secondary sources —especially PREALC and the World Bank— and partly collected in personal research made in some Latin American countries, the author describes and interprets the evolution of underemployment in the region during the period 1950-1980.

In the postwar period, as is known, Latin America underwent a process of demographic growth and urbanization unprecedented in its history.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the available statistical data in order to contribute to the interpretation of the process of absorption of labour in hatin America over the last 30 years.

In several earlier works —PREALC (1981), Tokman (1982) and Garcia (1982)— the authors analysed and interpreted the main long-term trends of employment, underemployment and unemployment observed in Latin America.

This article explores the structural heterogeneity and the insufficient dynamism of Latin American societies, with special reference to the use they have chiefly made of the surplus.

The impact of the present crisis on Latin America and the region’s external debt are the result of changes that have occurred in the international system during the last 15 years and of the transformation of the Latin American economies and societies.

The public in general, and oiten even economists themselves, feel confused by the wide variety of proposals for solving the international crisis that have been put forward in academic and political circles.