The principal purpose of this paper is to analyze the links between the labor market and growth in the economy of Lima Metropolitana, between 1970 and 1995. The effect of labor market in the product is indirect, by means of the effect of real wages upon domestic demand and external competitiveness. This double effect that real wages have is mediated by labor institutions. A second purpose of this paper is to determine if the growth of the product turns in a growth of the employment in the modern sector. By means of an analysis of cointegration we find real wages and the real expenditure of the government in wages are positively related to the product, while the real exchange rate has a negative relation. We also find that there exists a positive relation between the product and the employment of the modern sector, even though there is a subvaluation of the employment in the last years of the period. Finally, the stability tests obtained from the respective Error Correction Models tell us that the recent changes in the labor institutions still don’t have a noticeable effect on the estimated relations.
