Salaire d'efficience, vulnérabilité du travail et chômage urbain au Burkina Faso

By attracting the attention on the possibility of an inverse relationship between wages and unemployment, the model recently developed by Blanchflower and Oswald seems to provide an interesting explanation of the efficiency wage. Although this analysis is especially appropriated to the context of the industrialised countries, the opportunity of a such approach seems to prevail equally in developing countries. Indeed, with the help of the national household survey of Burkina Faso, realised in 1994_95, the present research shows that, all other things being equal, a doubling of the rate of unemployment implies a 25,8 per cent reduction in real wages. Furthermore, it appears that the rigidity of wages is far more strong for protected wage_earners that to these that have a non protected labour status. Since labour is an important asset whose shortage weakens the capacity of resistance of individuals or social groups to changes of the environment, the risk of insecurity in terms of well_being is considerably increased for individuals having a precarious labour status and for households whose chief is a non protected employee. This result would have to attract the attention of policy-makers whose objective is to eradicate the poverty and the vulnerability. (Full text in French)