Development and growth are supposed to have a positive impact in the labor
markets but “jobless growth” seems to be a major obstacle for the poor to benefit
from the positive growth performance experienced by this country, as by many
other countries around the world. There is a wide disparity in the extent of poverty
reduction that a growth process can achieve. Therefore, the impact of growth on
poverty is seen as depending on the extent to which growth generates employment
and good earning opportunities. If employment growth is achieved at the expense
of wage reductions, it may have an inadequate impact on poverty. Moreover,
since in many low income countries the poor cannot afford to be unemployed,
policies should be more concerned with raising the income of the working poor.
In this paper we analyze the evidence from Albania with the purpose to expand
the understanding of these issues, providing empirical effort into the debate that
why growth is jobless in this country, by studying the cumulative and sectored
employment and productivity profile of growth and its correlation with observed
poverty changes