A Solution To Eradicate Jobless Growth: Meritocracy

Abstract

World economy showed an important development after 9/11. With the transition of neoliberal economy programs, employment around the world had increased until 2008 global financial crisis. Because of the devastation effects of the crisis, the increase in the employment level stopped and reached a record level in some countries after 2008. Current appropriate economic policies are not enough because there are some factors which arise jobless growth. For instance, globalization, labor cost, tax burden, substitution between technology and labor, capital -intensive markets and so on create jobless growth, particularly in developing countries. In other words, economic policies are not enough to solve unemployment problem. In addition to these policies, contemporary and qualitative approaches should be used. One of these approaches is meritocracy. In terms of employment phenomenon, meritocracy is a notion that creates efficiency and justice in an economy. One of the examples which creates jobless growth is globalization. Globalization has adverse effects as well as positive effects. One of the examples is a substitution between technology and labor. If there is much automation in a company, less labor is employed. And this hampers to notice talented persons who create more efficiencies than technology can do. In addition, because these talented persons are unemployed due to technology substitution, some structural conflicts can arise. Although the reasons of jobless growth are based on economic reasons, the most efficient solution is to establish a meritocratic system. By using this system, the output will become more qualified than that of now because in that case the people in the system will become more qualified. In this study, the significance of meritocracy in eradication jobless growth will be emphasized and some examples related to developing countries will be given, and from this perspective some proposals will be presented to figure jobless growth problem out by creating a meritocratic system.