Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment in Less Developed Countries: Comment

Abstract

This paper comments on a paper written by Todaro (1969) and shows that urban unemployment cannot exist in equilibrium if employment in the urban sector is growing at a more rapid rate than the population as a whole and other factors are unchanging. Unfortunately, for practical purposes, this correction offers no ground for optimism--the "transitory" urban unemployment rates are depressingly high and long-lived. Indeed unemployment rates climb more than twice as high as the "equilibrium" rates estimated by Todaro (and his critic, Zarembka), for the same values of the parameters