Rural Unemployment: Incidence and Evidence

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anindya Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Rural Unemployment

levels which normally oscillated between 80,000 and 100,000 per year, and which in 1975 had soared up to 118,000 workers, were sharply reduced to 40,000 thereafter [First, 1982]. This mainly affected the southern part of Mozambique by creating massive rural unemployment. The towns had no capacity to absorb this surplus labour since employment was drastically re-duced in the towns as well. The latter process was due to the fall in employ-ment in domestic work (servants) and in the tourist sector (restaurants, hotels, bars, etc.). The exodus of Portuguese settlers and the virtual standstill of tourism (which catered for South Africans and Rhodesians) had amplified the problem of structural employment in the towns. The rural unemployed could not merely fall back on family agriculture since this was heavily dependent on cash income from wage work. Oxen and ploughs, farm implements, water reserves, etc. were normally paid for with wages from mine labour or other wage work. Furthermore, due to this cash inflow from wage income, a more interactive type of division of labour developed within the rural areas of southern Mozambique. Hence, peasants without oxen and plough would rent the services of peasants who did, and pay for it out of wage income. Brick-makers, carpenters, house-builders, tailors, mechanics were to be found among the middle peasantry who relied on these activities (usually acquired through mine labour) to supplement their income from farming. In a similar fashion, local transport and petty com-merce were sidelines of middle peasants stabilised by the influx of wage income. The reduction in mine labour employment deeply affected the viability of this internal division of labour within the rural economy. Finally, the impact of the reduction in mine labour was not evenly spread among the peasantry, since only those who held valid work certificates from the recruitment agency could continue to go to the mines. Other peasants were cut off altogether. This introduced a sharp element of differentiation within the rural econonmy. Those who could continued to go to the mines not only had cash income but also a guaranteed access to commodities (including means of production), while within Mozambique shortages were rapidly turning into a goods famine. However, rural unemployment was not merely a phenomena of the south. In central Mozambique, wage work to Rhodesia dropped sharply with the closure of the border between Mozambique and Rhodesia since 1976, and as a result of the war situation which developed thereafter. As stated in above, the concentration of resources on the state sector further weakened the basis of family agriculture at a time when a considerable part of its cash income through wage labour was cut off. While the colonial situ-ation was characterised by persistent labour shortages within the rural economy and continued state intervention to keep labour cheap (through the imposition of forced labour and forced cultivation of crops as well as by fragmentation of labour markets to avoid competition for labour to drive up the wage levels), the post-independence situation became characterised by rural unemployment and an intensified flow of people from the rural areas to the towns in search of wage work. The priority accorded to investments led to the slow expansion in the supply of consumer goods and in 1981 it actually fell by eight per cent: six per cent

2013 ◽  
pp. 197-204
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Cash Income ◽  
Wage Work ◽  
Family Agriculture ◽  
Slow Expansion ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Rural Unemployment ◽  
Wage Income

WALTER MORRELL AND THE NEW DRAPERIES PROJECT, c. 1603–1631

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL ZELL
Keyword(s):  
Privy Council ◽  
Rural Industry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Sources ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Rural Unemployment ◽  
Economic Thinking

This article explores the lengthy and convoluted history of a Jacobean project to set the idle poor to work making ‘new draperies’. Although the projector, Walter Morrell, convinced the Cecils, King James, and the privy council of the social and fiscal benefits of his scheme, he failed to persuade the Hertfordshire gentry. This case study in the formulation of crown economic policy, and in ‘Stuart paternalism’, draws upon Morrell's own detailed, unpublished treatise, as well as conventional political sources, and shows how the combination of ‘commonwealth’ rhetoric and progressive economic thinking could sway crown policy-making. It also demonstrates once again the limits of conciliar authority in early Stuart England. In the face of sustained provincial non-compliance, the privy council had neither the machinery nor the stomach to force the Hertfordshire elite to implement government policy and give meaningful support to a government-backed projector. And despite their inability to deal with growing rural unemployment, the Hertfordshire magistrates were unwilling to experiment with rural industry as a solution.

scholarly journals Unemployment and the Unemployed in Russia: Features, Structure, Dynamics from 2000 to 2016

2018 ◽  
pp. 48-53
Author(s):  
Andrei N. Ershov ◽  
Aleksandra A. Salatova
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Federal District ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
Federal Districts ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Unemployment ◽  
The Unemployed

This article provided an analysis of statistical data on the dynamics and the changes in the structure of unemployment in the three Russian federal districts (Central, Volga, and North-Caucasian FD) from 2000 to 2016. The analysis also made it possible to distinguish the following features: 1. The differentiation of the ratio, but the similarity of the dynamics of urban/rural unemployment across all districts; 2. The absence of gender discrimination, moreover, during the crisis, women and men were evenly displaced from the labour market. 3. A slight difference in the average age of the unemployed in the districts (35-36 years - Central, Volga, 33-34 years - North Caucasus) and the general trend of its increase. 4. The largest group in the structure of the unemployed in all districts formed by individuals with a secondary general education. However, in the Central Federal District, there was a tendency for a gradual increase in the proportion of unemployed people with higher education. 5. The presence of a gap, with a tendency to its gradual reduction in all districts, between the levels of registered unemployment and calculated ones according to the methodology of the International Labour Organization. Thus, the structure of Russian unemployment changes in accordance with world trends was described while the trend to reduce unemployment was contrary to them.

scholarly journals Rural unemployment pushes migrants to urban areas in Jiangsu Province, China

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoyang Lyu ◽  
Zengchuan Dong ◽  
Mahendran Roobavannan ◽  
Jaya Kandasamy ◽  
Saket Pande
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Jiangsu Province ◽  
Rural Unemployment

Initially, mine workers would be rather reluctant to invest their wages in means of production (in agriculture and in transport) within the Mozambican rural economy. Up to 1980/81, government policies were not favourable to such investments. However, thereafter, miners were specifically encouraged to plough back their wages into production and commerce. Rural unemployment was widespread and, hence, the conditions for private accumulation were favourable on this count. Generally, miners would invest in transport and commerce, but some did invest in agriculture. Indeed, in the latter years, peasants with resources were allowed to operate on unutilised ex-settler farms. In other cases, the more permanent and better paid state farm workers could use their specific position to strengthen their own farm, often supplemented by hired labour. As mechanics or tractor drivers, etc. they had access to cer-tain resources such as seeds, fertiliser, fuel and consumer goods which they could buy either from the state farm or, not unfrequently, merely take from stocks on the state farms. Border areas were another such case of differentiated access to resources by means of barter trade cross the border. Due to the political criticality of such areas within a general condition of war, the government distribution policy would grant a certain priority to supplying these areas with commodities which would then provide a basis for further barter trade with the neighbouring country. Further, areas located more closely to the main food markets (either towns or plantations) would be subject to a much more dispersed and intensive barter and money trade, thereby raising the producer prices which would benefit those peasants who had sufficient resources to produce surpluses. More distant food producing areas were much more within the grip of the commercial traders who provided the link with the market. Hence, while some strata within the peasantry managed to create some room for themselves by producing for the parallel markets, the majority of rural producers (either as wage labourers or small-scale producers) confronted declining real incomes as a result of the inflation on the parallel markets to which they had to turn not only for industrial commodities but also to supplement their food needs. Hence, their problem was not one of having too much money at hand with too few commodities to buy; rather, they experi-enced an acute shortage of both money and goods. The poorer peasantry were the main suppliers of seasonal labour to the state sector. However, although rural unemployment was high, the supply of labour was by no means elastic. The reasons for this were the following. First, the pattern of labour demand of the state farms and plantations was in most cases highly seasonal and, hence, did not provide an all-round income for the worker. Second, money wages earned on the state farm did not guarantee any access to commodities, and often did so only at speculative prices. For both reasons, the real basis of security of the rural worker still remained his family farm, however fragile that may have been. The state sector may have become dominant in terms of area and in terms of production (regarding monetary output), but it certainly was not the dominant aspect in securing the livelihood of rural producers. In most cases, the pattern of peak demand for labour on the state farms coincided with the peak demand for labour in family agriculture. For example,

2013 ◽  
pp. 208-208
Keyword(s):  
Rural Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
State Farm ◽  
Peak Demand ◽  
State Sector ◽  
The Government ◽  
Rural Unemployment ◽  
Rural Producers ◽  
Food Needs

scholarly journals Rural Unemployment in Gujarat and West Bengal

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subrata Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Agricultural Growth ◽  
Agricultural Employment ◽  
Rural Unemployment

Based on NSSO data sets, this study covers the period from 1993 to 2010 and focuses on a comparison of rural unemployment in Gujarat and West Bengal, chosen because of their contrasting characteristics. In the past few decades, Gujarat has emphasised growth through modern industrial production, while under a different ideological regime, West Bengal aimed to achieve agricultural growth, land reform and more egalitarian patterns of agricultural incomes. Recent evidence suggests that meanwhile Gujarat’s agriculture has registered high growth in output during 2000–08, while West Bengal has failed to kick off industrialisation, despite making some pressing efforts. The article clearly identifies the limited scope for agriculture to provide full employment for all young rural people in India. However, given the important role of the agricultural sector in safeguarding national food security, it becomes obvious that apart from careful attention to agricultural developments, sustainable alternatives to traditional agricultural employment need to be activated. The concluding section therefore considers various policy options for tackling the risks of rural unemployment and underemployment in India.

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