ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of socioeconomic features, e.g. population growth, migration, inflation, and land distribution, that have appeared in the literature as partial explanations of the employment problem. According to the neo-classical non-segmented labour market theory, the returns on education are the returns on the impact of increased human capital on productivity. There are other closely related factors, besides the functioning of the labour market itself, that affect the employment balance. The chapter also examines the question of whether rural-to-urban migration is a major cause of unemployment and discusses the composition of Colombia’s trade and its impact on employment. The consumption and trading patterns that lead to the composition of output in Colombia are unlikely to change without a significant change in the distribution of income and a lesser dependence on the outside world. Rural-to-urban migration has been moderately high, around six Colombians per 1,000 per year change their department of residence.
