this shift in the labour intensity of economic growth could be related among other factors to the characteristics of foreign direct investment fdi in the first phase fdi focused on acquisitions often of stateowned enterprises which resulted in layoffs while in the second phase the generation of new production capacities greenfield investment predominated eclac a as a result of these transformations it was noted that in the recent period of growth larger enterprises which are generally more productive and competitive accounted for an increased share of the employment structure wei ler and kaldewei pages and however it emphasized that these effects were modest and often limited to certain groups of workers