-9-

only 37 per cent of the females being so classified. For the usual reasons these estimates result in a significant understatement of the amount of productive work undertak % by women. Half of the working population were engaged in agricultural work (two-thirds of the females and about 44 per cent of the males). One third were self-employed and a further 5 per cent (but 12 per cent of the females) were unpaid family workers - again, preponderantly in the agricultural sector.

# Aspects of Labour Demand

Data on the number of employees in the formal sector are shown in Table 4. As is to be expected from what has been said earlier, experiences in the labour market bafore and after 1975 were very different. The first decade of independence was characterised by steady growth of formal employment at about 4 per cent per year, such that, by 1975, approximately 50 per cent more workers were employed than had been the case at independence. Subsequently, however, employment fell back, declining, on average, by about one per cent per year to 1984. This circumstance of absolute decline in formal employment over the decade beginning in 1975 is the most fundamental feature of ZaMbia's recent labour market history. Its effects have been momentous. The proportion of the labour force employed in the formal sector has fallen by one third since 1975. An even more startling implication is that whereas one in thirtieen Zambians had a job in the formal sector in 1975, ten years later only approximately one in 18 persons had such a job. Thus, the number of persons without access to any (direct or indirect) support from wage or salary incomes is now vastly greater than it was in the early 1970s.

The structure of formal employment by industry is indicated in Table 5. A number of important features emerge from this table. First, job losses after 1975 were heavily concentrated in the construction industry, which io3t more than half of its jobs by 1984. The primary cause of this concentration was the massive fall in investment expenditures, which resulted from the curtailment of domestic expenditures in response to the country's growing payments deficit. Second, employment also fell in mining and quarrying, particularly after 1980, in response to the sharply curtailed profitability of the copper industry. Thirdly, apart from agriculture, which stagnated over the period, employment elsewhere actually rose: in manufacturing and transport by about 10 per cent, and in services, by about 7 per cent to 1984 (but by somewhat more to 1980). More detailed analysis of the data for services reveals that the rise to 1980 was almost entirely due to expansion o. employment in the public sector, which could not be sustained, for fiziancial reasons, beyond that date. Nevertheless, it remains true that the most severe employment problems were contained in a rather narrow industrial range: outside mining and construction job losses were not so severe.

This Lonclusion is strengthened if one considers only Zambian employees. Rapid progress with localisation was achieved after 1975 - that is, an increasing number of Zambians took over jobs previously held by expatriates. Thus, whilst the total job losses between 1975 and 1984 amounted to about 30,000, almost 20,000 expatriate workers appeared to have been