The Nexus Among Economic Growth, Inflation and Unemployment in Bhutan

In order to understand the dynamics of unemployment in Bhutan at a macro-level, this study has explored the association among economic growth, inflation and unemployment from 1998 to 2016. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was applied to estimate the impact of economic growth and inflation on unemployment. The results of this empirical analysis suggest that economic growth had no impact on the reduction of unemployment rate in Bhutan both in the short and in the long run. In fact, as the economic growth increased, so did the unemployment rate. However, inflation had a negative association with unemployment rate in the short run and a positive association in the long run. In other words, an increase in the employment rate led to an increase in the inflation in the short run. Likewise, if inflation is not monitored or controlled, the uncertainty of inflation can lead to lower investment and lower economic growth, thereby causing unemployment to rise in the long run. This study, therefore, recommends policymakers to take into account the employment elasticity with respect to economic output and focus on sectors, which have more absorptive capacity in engaging the young labour market entrants. JEL: B22, C22, E24, E31