Thus, within a little more than one generation, Morocco can achieve substantial gains in standards of living, going from a current relative income ratio of 8.7 percent with respect to France to one‐third.

The next question is how much does the decline in the aggregate unemployment rate reported in the above experiments translate into actual numbers? The model does not include a detailed demographic structure, but an approximate calculation can be performed as follows. With an initial estimated workforce of 11,827 million individuals in 2015 (see Figure 2.10), the number of unemployed is initially 0.094*11,827 or 1,111,738 individuals; with a 4.5 percentage point reduction, as in Reform Program 4, the number of unemployed would decline to 579,523 individuals, or a reduction of 532,215 individuals. This figure represents the total long‐term effect of Reform Program 4 on the _stock_ of unemployed workers. However, these numbers do not account for the _flow_ of new workers.

To calculate the effect on the _flow_ of jobs and _change_ in unemployment on an annual basis, we can use the implicit elasticity linking job creation and economic growth. Based on estimates by the High Commission for Planning, during the period 2000‐2013, the economy created about 120,000 jobs per year. At the same time, the average annual growth rate during that period was 4.3 percent. Each point of GDP growth therefore created about 27,900 jobs. Assuming that the number of jobs created annually remains the same, Reform Program 4, which implies an average annual growth rate of 6.3 percent, would therefore result in an increase of about 175,770 jobs a year. As estimated by HCP, the mean value of the change in the working population during the past decade is about 160,000 people a year. The proposed reform program would thus fully absorb the annual increase in the labor force, that is to say, the _flow_ of new people to the working population. However, in net terms, only an additional 175,770 ‐ 160,000 = 15,770 jobs would be created to absorb the _stock_ of unemployed, estimated (as noted earlier) at 1,111,738 in 2015. Over a ten‐year period, this means that the stock of unemployed would fall by 157,700, which means that the stock of unemployed would still be at 954,038, or equivalently, the unemployment rate would still be 954,038/11827,000 = 8.1 percent. To reduce unemployment to a benchmark of 3 percent of the initial stock of unemployed (a number often viewed as consistent with full employment), which corresponds to a number of unemployed of 0.03*11827,000 = 354,810, and assuming the same number of net job creation, 15,770 a year, it would take (1111,738‐354,810)/15,770 = 48 years. Alternatively, to achieve the same 3 percent objective in exactly 10 years, and again assuming a rate of growth of 6.3 percent per annum as in Reform Program 4, the number of jobs created per percentage point of GDP would need to increase from 27,900 a year per percentage point of economic growth to almost 37,411 jobs per point of growth a year, an increase of about one‐third over the recent historical average. This is a challenging task for any country but there is evidence that the employment elasticity of growth can be influenced significantly by structural reforms (Crivelli et al., 2012). In the case of Morocco, more specifically, to achieve this result even more ambitious labor market reforms – especially those affecting the demand for unskilled labor – as well as deeper reforms in other areas (to improve the business environment and access to finance, and accelerate diversification of the economy) would be required.

Finally, as noted earlier, the quantitative model used in the previous experiments does not account for the whole range of policies advocated in this paper. In particular, the model 54