Does Output-growth Necessarily Imply Employment-growth?

There is an assumption in some non-expert discussions of macroeconomics that growth in real output must automatically imply a growth in the availability of employment opportunities. Growth theorists do not appear to have lent support to this. But there is no doubt that at the popular level many countries have believed that provided growth in output was reasonably high and sustained over a long period, the employment situation would definitely take a turn for the better. Despite difficulties in the measurement of macro-employment and the trend therein, there has always been considerable sceptism in India concerning the inviolability of the link between growth and employment. This scepticism is partly based on the pattern of development experience in India; it is fair to state that a number of Indian economists had from the early 1950s disputed the claims of growth enthusiasts that in the long run, at least, the employment implications of growth would assert themselves. In retrospect, these critics seem to have been proved correct. But the question remains whether Indian development planners did in fact desire employment expansion for itself. The following note looks at some compositional, structural and related aspects of growth and outlines the reasons why the employment effect in our development process has turned out to be weak.