Can the Level of Employment be Explained by GDP Growth in Transition Countries? (Theory versus the Quality of Data)

type="main" xml:lang="en"> <p>This paper presents a survey on the relationship between growth and employment in selected transition economies. The second section discusses the empirical evidence using two sets of recent data on employment and pays special attention to gender inequality in economic activity. The third section provides an overview of the literature on the causes of the behaviour of employment and output in transition countries. The fourth section tests the response of employment to GDP growth using data from 11 years and 11 countries. The main result of the paper shows that there seems to be no relationship between output growth and the level of employment in the post-transition period for two countries: Bulgaria and Ukraine. The fact that both countries have one of the highest shares of unofficial economy in total output in the region is suggested as the main explanation behind this striking result.