Susan Lund's blog

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest contribution by Susan Lund, Director of Research at the McKinsey Global Institute. She will be speaking at the World Bank on the topic of job creation on January 24 as part of the FPD Chief Economist Talk series.

Perhaps no topic is more pressing today than the growing jobs and employment problem. We estimate that there are 40 million unemployed in high-income countries and tens of millions more who have dropped out of the workforce or are under-employed. Not only does this exact a toll in human misery and dampen lifetime economic prospects, but it also places a drag on aggregate demand and tax receipts at a time when both are sorely needed.

Unfortunately, these 40 million may just be the foretaste of what could be in store. Increasingly, the job market in developed economies is bifurcating: full-time employment, job security and rising incomes for high-skill, technically trained, and entrepreneurial workers—and the opposite for almost everyone else. Factories are becoming places of many robots and a few high-skill technicians. The modern office is becoming more virtual—a network of task specialists who may work remotely and are increasingly likely to be part-time or contract labor. Shops are online; those made of brick and mortar increasingly are self-serve and self-checkout.

Editor’s Note: The following blog post was contributed by Susan Lund, Ph.D., Research Director of the McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey & Company’s business and research arm. Dr. Lund will be making a presentation at the World Bank on July 20th summarizing the institute’s new report, Lions on the move: The progress and potential of African economies, which can be downloaded for free at www.mckinsey.com/mgi.

Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to present new research on Africa's economic prospects at the World Bank, home to many Africa experts and the source of so much invaluable research on the region. I have no doubt the combination of expertise from the McKinsey Global Institute and the World Bank will produce a lively discussion. As you well know, Africa continues to face many challenges, including poverty, disease and hunger. But our report shows Africa is also a land of great progress and potential. In this blog entry, I briefly summarize some of our key findings. We hope our report will provide a useful fact-base for the World Bank in its lending programs and dialogue with Africa’s policy makers and private sector.

We at McKinsey find many of our business clients are eager for insights into Africa’s recent acceleration in GDP growth. Africa’s collective economy grew at a 4.9 percent annual rate from 2000 through 2008, twice as fast as the pace of the preceding two decades. Africa is the third fastest growing economic region in the world, after emerging Asia and the Middle East. The continent’s combined economic output, valued at $1.6 trillion in 2008, is now roughly equal to Brazil’s or Russia’s. Africa offers investors the highest rate of return of any developing region.