ABSTRACT
Population growth and unemployment, especially the unemployment of school leavers, are two phenomena linked by a third intervening factor, the type of education. Labour in Swaziland is absorbed by basically three sectors of the economy: the formal, the informal, and the traditional. Change in employment in the informal sector has been less dramatic when compared with the formal sector. Traditional sector employment in Swaziland is dominated by the agricultural employment with sedentary dry farming being the most preferred cropping practice. Employment of Swazis outside Swaziland, especially in the Republic of South Africa, has continued to play an important role as an unemployment safety valve and contributor to foreign exchange earnings. Swaziland, like many countries in the third world is faced with two problems, that of job creation and that of unemployment. The economic development and employment situation in Swaziland seem to be rather complex in nature, fitting neither the dual economic theory of classical times nor the neo-classical dependency theory.
