Labor markets in Sudan : their structure and implications for macroeconomic adjustment
Fallon, Peter R.
The Sudanese labor market is characterized by considerable regional mobility with little intervention in the workings of the private labor market. Thus, a general hypothesis explored in this paper is that there is a competitive private sector labor market existing side by side with extensive government intervention and growing surpluses of specific categories of workers. The paper first analyzes agricultural labor markets and the existence of significant seasonal migration. The main conclusion is that the consensus that there are widespread labor shortages requires some qualification, particularly with regard to the role of wages in clearing submarkets during the season. The study then discusses the importance of international labor migration in the Sudan, whose main impact is seen in shortages of skilled manual labor within the country. In the following section, it studies urban labor markets, that are characterized by enormous importance of public sector employment and by the fact that dualistic approaches are not currently applicable to interpret observed overall employment trends. With regard to wages, our main conclusions refer to a widening wage differential between public and private sectors and to a secular compression of skill differentials within the public sector.
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