scholarly journals Informal Labour Markets As A Solution For Unemployment In South Africa – A Case Study Of Car Guards In Bloemfontein

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. F. Blaauw ◽  
L. J. Bothma
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Skill Development ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Informal Labour ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Formal And Informal Sectors ◽  
Harsh Conditions

The car guard industry in South Africa evolved out of the plight of the unemployed. Very little research has been done on the industry in South Africa. The first objective of this article is to address the lack of research and the second is to determine whether the car guard industry can provide a solution to the problem of unemployment. Car guards involved in this study were found to be generally low skilled, earning low income and working under harsh conditions for long hours. The majority of them held formal sector employment before becoming unemployed. Car guarding is not a solution to the plight of the unemployed. Training and skill development supplemented by accelerated economic growth are vital to bridge the gap between the formal and informal sectors. OpsommingDie motorwag-industrie in Suid Afrika het onstaan uit die lot van die massa werkloses in die land. Weinig navorsing is al oor die industrie gedoen. Die doelwit van die artikel is eerstens om die gebrek aan navorsing aan te vul en tweedens om te bepaal of die motorwagindustrie ’n oplossing vir die probleem van werkloosheid kan bied. Motorwagte in die studie is oor die algemeen laag geskoold, swak besoldig en werksaam vir lang ure onder moeilike omstandighede. Die meeste het ’n werk in die formele sektor van die ekonomie gehad voordat hulle werkloos geword het. Om ’n motorwag te wees kan nooit ’n oplossing vir werkloosheid wees nie. Opleiding en die ontwikkeling van noodsaaklike vaardighede teen ’n agtergrond van versnelde ekonomiese groei, is uiters noodsaaklik om die gaping tussen die informele en formele sektor te oorbrug.

scholarly journals The employment history of day labourers in South Africa and the income they earn - A case study of day labourers in Pretoria

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 458-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
PF Blaauw ◽  
H Louw ◽  
R Schenck
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Employment History ◽  
Informal Labour ◽  
History Of ◽  
Harsh Conditions

 Formal sector unemployment forces many workers to venture into the informal sector.  The activities of day labourers are no exception.  The aim of this paper is to address the lack of research on informal labour markets by focusing on the day labourers in Pretoria as a case study and to investigate the employment history of and income earned by day labourers in Pretoria.  Day labourers involved in this study were mainly male, young, low skilled, earning low and uncertain levels of income and working under harsh conditions.  A significant portion of day labourers in Pretoria previously held formal sector occupations.  Long spells of unemployment can make it difficult for day labourers to return to the formal sector.  Many activities in the informal sector can never provide a permanent solution to unemployment. 

scholarly journals Re-Visting the Electricity-Growth Nexus in South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Phiri ◽  
Bothwell Nyoni
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Domestic Investment ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Trivariate Analysis

AbstractThis research study contributes to the ever-expanding literature by examining multivariate cointegration and causality relationships between electricity consumption, economic growth and other growth determinants for quarterly South African data collected between 1994/Q1 – 2014/Q4. The motivation behind this current research case study becomes apparent when taking into consideration that no previous studies have gone further than bivariate and trivariate analysis in investigating the electricity-growth nexus in South Africa. In conducting our empirical investigation, our obtained empirical results are two-fold in nature. Firstly, we find significant multivariate long-run cointegration relationships between economic growth, electricity consumption and other growth determinants. Secondly, our empirical analysis offers support in favour of the neutrality hypothesis, that is, the notion of no causal effects existing between electricity consumption and economic growth in the long-run. However, we find that exports directly cause electricity consumption whereas economic growth, domestic investment and employment levels causally flow to exports.

scholarly journals Strengthening public financial management in the health sector: a qualitative case study from South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. e006911
Author(s):  
Jodi Wishnia ◽  
Jane Goudge
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Financial Management ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Health Coverage ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Public Financial Management

IntroductionEffective public financial management (PFM) ensures public health funds are used to deliver services in the best way possible. Given the global call for universal health coverage, and concerns about the management of public funds in many low-income and middle-income countries, PFM has become an important area of research. South Africa has a robust PFM framework, that is generally adhered to, and yet financial outcomes have remained poor. In this paper, we describe how a South African provincial department of health tried to strengthen its PFM processes by deploying finance managers into service delivery units, involving service delivery managers in the monthly finance meeting, using a weekly committee to review expenditure requests and starting a weekly managers’ ‘touch-base’ meeting. We assess whether these strategies strengthened collaboration and trust and how this impacted on PFM.MethodThis research used a case study design with ethnographic methods. Semi-structured interviews (n=30) were conducted with participant observations. Thematic analysis was used to identify emergent themes and collaborative public management theory was then used to frame the findings. The authors used reflexive methods, and member checking was conducted.ResultsThe deployment of staff and touch-base meeting illustrated the potential of multidisciplinary teams when members share power, and the importance of impartial leadership when trying to achieve consensus on how to prioritise resource use. However, the service delivery and finance managers did not manage to collaborate in the monthly finance meeting to develop realistic budgets, or to reprioritise expenditure when required. The resulting mistrust threatened to derail the other strategies, highlighting how critical trust is for collaboration.ConclusionEffective PFM requires authentic collaboration between service delivery and finance managers; formal processes alone will not achieve this. We recommend more opportunities for ‘boundary crossing’, embedding finance managers in service delivery units and impartial effective leadership.

scholarly journals The challenge of low employment economic growth in South Africa: 1994 -2008

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darma Mahadea ◽  
Richard Simson
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Time Horizon ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Critical Problem ◽  
Unemployment Rates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Economic Growth Rates

The formal sector in South Africa is unable to provide adequate employment for labour although the economy registered positive economic growth rates over the past 15 years since the demise of apartheid.  This is a critical problem, given the current recessionary climate and recent developments in the economies of our trading partners.  While government has responded with many initiatives to deal with employment creation, unemployment rates remain high.  This problem is examined by reviewing South Africa’s growth performance and links to employment and posits various alternative strategies.  The growth elasticity of employment is found to be rather low over the 1994-2008 period, and even over a longer time horizon the marginal growth employment effect is found to be rather weak.   

PROSPECTS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO THE CHALLENGE OF JOB CREATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (04) ◽  
pp. 1250020 ◽  
Author(s):  
DARMA MAHADEA
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
New Ventures ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
Growth Effect ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Employment Creation ◽  
Formidable Challenge ◽  
The Government ◽  
Economic Growth Rates

Entrepreneurship is critical to job creation and economic growth. Unemployment in South Africa is presently at about 25 percent. The formal sector is unable to provide adequate employment opportunities for labor although the country registered positive economic growth rates over the past 17 years since the demise of apartheid. Some people manage to obtain employment in the informal sector. However, this sector also has been shedding labor recently. Although the government has responded with many initiatives to deal with employment creation, unemployment rates, especially among the youth, remain a formidable challenge. Entrepreneurship, through the creation of new ventures and expansion of business firms, can make a difference to absorb more people in the labor market. However, this depends on the level of entrepreneurial capacity and environment of the South African economy. This paper examines the problem of low employment economic growth performance over the post-apartheid period. By drawing on the Harrod-Domar model as a heuristic guide, and using regression analysis, the paper highlights the probable links between changes in economic growth and in employment. The results indicate the marginal employment growth effect is positive, the growth elasticity of employment is low over the 1994–2010 period and investment in relation to the country's desired growth in GDP is also found to be low. The paper identifies some constraints to employment creation against the entrepreneurial environmental conditions in South Africa and then examines how entrepreneurship can make a difference to employment creation.

scholarly journals Everyday hazards and vulnerabilities amongst backyard dwellers: A case study of Vredendal North, Matzikama Municipality, South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia J. Zweig
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Local Municipality ◽  
Low Cost Housing ◽  
The Town

The populations of many small towns in South Africa continue to expand unmatched by parallel economic growth, entrenching high levels of poverty. The town of Vredendal, located close to the national route between Namibia and Cape Town in South Africa, is a West Coast development node and an emergent industrial and processing area that continues to attract an influx of people seeking economic opportunities. This is challenging the capacity of the local municipality, which has a waiting list for state-provided low-cost housing units, whilst the provision of adequate infrastructure to meet growing local need is also a developmental concern. In the suburb of Vredendal North this has resulted in the proliferation of unplanned informal dwellings in the backyards of formalised low-cost housing areas. Largely overlooked by urban researchers, little is known or understood about small town backyard populations. This prompted a brief study of Vredendal North backyard dwellers commissioned by the local municipality to identify their everyday hazards and livelihood vulnerabilities to inform future development planning. A community workshop identified critical development needs and suggested that backyard dwellers in small towns experience similar living conditions and hazards to those in the cities, although underlain by some unique differences.

scholarly journals Transforming informal work and livelihoods in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Shu-Ming Lin ◽  
Linxiang Ye ◽  
Wei Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Informal Sector ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Urban Migrants ◽  
Chinese Workers ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Formal And Informal Sectors ◽  
Populous Country

The informal sector has long been viewed as a locus of the disadvantaged, unskilled, and inexperienced workers in under-developed and developing economies. Workers in the informal sector, however, can learn skills and gain experience that could help them switch to better-paying jobs in the formal sector. But evidence of this is limited. China constitutes an important case study because it is the most populous country and has the largest labour force, consisting of over 290 million rural-to-urban migrants whose employment is mostly informal. Using three waves of nationally representative household surveys from 2014 to 2018, we study how the livelihoods of Chinese workers change when transitioning to different work statuses within or between formal and informal sectors. Our results show that transitioning jobs from the informal to the formal sector and from the self-employed to the wage-employed increases earnings, which improves the livelihoods of Chinese workers.

scholarly journals South African Career Development Institution Management in Graduates Alumni Assisten

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
Tonto Chioma Dominic ◽  
Iyabo Ike Sobowale
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Career Development ◽  
South African ◽  
Skill Development ◽  
Important Goal ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Institution

This article discusses career development management that can help career empowerers combine skills such as applying theoretical constructs realistically and creatively to focus on innovative ways of doing things that make careers possible as factors that provide support to employees in the workplace and contribute on their professional development. In contrast to other approaches to career development, the conventional approach to career development is mainly focused with techniques that are meant to utilize skill development and supply to drive economic growth rather than anything else. However, although the promotion of economic growth is an important goal for career development in South Africa, it is not the only goal for the country's development agenda, which includes a number of other goals. Globally, a vision of career development based on clearly defined economic goals would be at conflict with South Africa's development rhetoric, according to the World Bank's Africa Development Report

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