14 Africa, and fell sharply in Latin America. In Latin America, for example, the wage bill share fell by 8 percentage points, other current spending rose by 2 points, capital spending by 6 points, and interest payments rose by almost 18 percentage points, belying the contention that a growing wage bill -- rather than debt service -- crowded out complementary public spending. In Africa between 1980 and 1986, interest payments rose by 9 points, and the shares of both capital spending and the wage bill remained constant, while nonwage current spending fell almost five points and the deficits widened, so that it is true that the wage bill was not cut during the initial years of increased constraints on noninterest expenditure (van Ginnekin 1990:445).

Robinson's survey of seven African countries, however, found that the wage bill had grown substantially in six of the seven (Robinson 1990:15)." When the change in the wage bill was decomposed into employment effects (a change in employment), salary effects (changes in the salary paid to each grade level), structural effects (changes in the distribution of employees among grade levels), and cross-effects, a differentiated picture emerged. In general, structural changes are less important than employment and salary effects.<sup>9</sup> In three countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Togo), the employment effect predominated. In Morocco, the effect of employment growth was slightly less than the effect of salary increases, and in Tunisia, salary increases were by far the most important factor in the growing wage bill. In Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the employment effect was strongly negative, but offset by salary increases in Sierra Leone, and barely offset by salary and structural changes in Nigeria. Finally, for the three countries for which time series are presented, the wage bili grew at a declining rate over time.

Growth of government emplovment compared with other indicators. During the entire period 1980-86, the rate of growth of government employment -- excluding public enterprises -- in Sub-Saharan Africa was greater than the rate of growth of the labor force. In seven of eight Latin American countries, government employment grew faster than total employment until 1984, but after 1984 was equal to or less than the rate of growth in the private sector.

In Africa during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the numbers of unskilled civil servants increased relatively faster than the overall rate of growth of the civil service. One reason for this is that day laborers are in a category separate from, other civil service grades (and often unrecorded and untracked) in countries like Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia. When government hiring is frozen or capped, extra day laborers are hired as a way around restrictions (Lindauer, Meesook, and Suebsaeng 1988:20). An additional outcome of a shift in skill composition over time in Asia has been increased dualism. The movement in some countries to enforce protective labor and job security laws for covered workers has led to a worsening of conditions and skills -- and possibly of educational levels -- for uncovered casual and contract workers (Amjad and Edgren 1991:297; Horton and others 1991:56). The end result supports the picture drawn above--an uncontrolled expansion of both the number of civil servants and the total wage bill often go hand in hand with critical skill shortages.