A long-term, global perspective is needed to understand fully the employment problem and the prospects for eliminating it. Over the past four decades, the world economy has generated more than one billion jobs, more than were created during the previous four centuries. If past trends continue, it will create another 1.3 billion jobs during the next 35 years. The current anxiety in the West is similar to that which the United States passed through in the 1890s when agricultural mechanization displaced 4.4 million farm workers, generating double digit unemployment and visions of a dismal future. Yet, over the last 100 years, employment in the United States grew by nearly 100 million jobs or 400 per cent. Between 1990 and 2005, it increased by another 23 million. Between 1990 and 2005, it inc