[Developing countries] An important objective of an industrialization strategy should be to create additional employment opportunities in non-traditional activities for the growing labour force. However, the experience of developing countries indicates that demand for labour in the manufacturing sector has not expanded at a satisfactory rate, given the rate of growth of output. Among the reasons for this lack of employment expansion are: the labour-saving bias embedded in modern industrial technology; changes in the composition of manufacturing output; the evolution of relative factor prices; and the growth in production.
In the end of 1980s MVA (Manufacturing Value Added) accounted for no greater percentage of total GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the least developed countries than it did in the 1970s. If the rapid growth of population is taken into account, than the picture becomes even more dismal: sixteen least developed countries experienced negative growth rates in MVA per capita during the first half of the 1980s.