Despite impressive economic growth rates, Armenia has yet to experience growth in employment. Typical of many other Europe and Central Asia countries, workers displaced in the "old" sectors have had few chances to find jobs in the "new" sectors. Thus, the scarcity of productive job opportunities and the underuse of labor are major socioeconomic problems in the country. From the point of view of labor, of the two main ways to achieve GDP growth—an increase in the number of employed or improvements in productivity—in Armenia, GDP increased mainly due to the latter.
Labor shedding in the "old" sectors has also been impressive. There is a clear trend of decrease in the share of agriculture and manufacturing, and of increase in the share of the services sector, which, for the last 10 years, is characteristic of countries in all income groups in almost every part of the world. In this regard, Armenia, as a country in transition in the group of lower-middle-income countries, has had, as of 2004, an economic structure corresponding to that group of countries. Nevertheless, the trend of the decline in the share of agriculture after its unprecedented increase during 1990-94 generally corresponds to global developments. Thus, in the near future, we can expect a further decline in the share of agriculture and manufacturing in GDP, and continuous increase in the share of services; stabilization and certain growth in nonagricultural employment, which will happen mainly at the expense of the absolute and relative decline in agricultural employment; and stabilization in overall employment and its future growth of 0.1 to 0.5 percent annually.download
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