Chapter Eight - Commodification of Labour

Summary

For over a decade prior to the uprisings, the unemployment rate in the AW remained among the highest globally. Despite high growth rates from 2002 until 2011, the official—not the actual—unemployment rate stayed in double-digit territory, between ten and fifteen per cent. This poor job creation response to economic growth discloses flawed macro policies. If the reason for unemployment's persistence was related to the WB/IMF's ‘macro fundamentals’, then up to the point at which the Arab uprisings began, these ere well positioned. The fiscal accounts were either reduced or in surplus (surplus in the case of oil exporters), the inflation rates were moderate and declining, and reserves covered about two years of imports. Despite that, and as if in defiance of mainstream economic doctrine, unemployment reacted poorly and income inequality gaped wider. The reason is simple enough. In the neoliberal age, the decent job-producing economy had become too small relative to the sheer size of the labour force and most workers had to resort to poverty-wage employment. Value and wealth were extracted by pauperising and disempowering the working class. Consequently, as noted in Chapter One, labour's share of total income declined.