Measuring Growth Of Labour Quality And The Quality-Adjusted Unemployment Rate In Switzerland

This paper presents results on human capital accumulation for the Swiss economy. The authors find that the index of labor quality has grown at a rate of 0.5% per year from 1991 to 2006. The main sources are the growth in average levels of education and the passing of the baby boom cohort through the age structure of the workforce. Projections over the period 2006-2050 suggest that labor quality growth will slow down with time. They also calculate a quality-adjusted unemployment rate and find that the unemployment rate is reduced by about 0.3 pp when human capital accumulation is taken into account.