Analysing Intersectoral Outsourcing in South Africa
Tregenna examines whether services employment growth in South Africa can be explained by outsourcing or alternatively expanded activity. To do this, Tregenna develops a new methodology for quantifying the extent that outsourcing contributes to shifts in employment between sectors. Using occupational and sectoral data from the October Household Surveys (1997–1999) and Labour Force Surveys (2000–2005),…
read more >>Translating Sectoral Growth into Job Creation: A View of South Africa’s Tourism Industry
Tourism has been identified as a priority job creation sector. Lowitt tests the realism of policymakers’ expectations for the sector. It focuses on three key areas: understanding demand; understanding how demand is translated into job creation; and understanding how the sector interacts with the broader economy through linkages with other sectors, output multipliers, employment multipliers…
read more >>The Job-Creating Potential of the Metered Taxi Industry in South Africa’s Urban Areas: Some Preliminary Findings
One of the aims of the Human Sciences Research Council’s Employment Growth and Development Initiative is to analyse economic diversification and identify potential future growth sectors, based on their growth potential and labour absorption capacity. One possible candidate is considered here – the metered taxi sector, which fits both these criteria well. This proposal provides…
read more >>A Review of Trade in Services
The flow of trade in services is notoriously hard to measure, which makes it difficult to identify its role in driving the growth and competitiveness of the economy. This report reviews the official data on South Africa’s trade in services and compares it to other sources of information to assess the extent to which the…
read more >>Leveraging Services for Growth, Employment & Equity. Project Overview
Services account for the majority of employment creation globally. Yet economic policy often treats service sectors as a residual consideration in their growth and employment strategies. The HSRC supported the cluster of South African economic departments to frame explicit strategies towards the services sectors. This report was an early contribution, to offer a framework for…
read more >>Which Sectors Can Be Engines of Growth and Employment in South Africa? An Analysis of Manufacturing and Services
Tregenna investigates whether manufacturing still has the potential to be the engine of growth in South Africa, or whether services can play this role in future. International comparisons reveal that while the share of manufacturing value added in South Africa is high for the country’s level of income, the share of manufacturing employment is less…
read more >>Growth, Employment and Distribution Impacts of Minerals Dependency: Four Case Studies
Cross-country evidence on the direct and indirect impacts of minerals dependency on growth suggests that the typical effect may be negative. The impact on employment and income distribution is even more likely to be adverse, since many minerals generate few jobs directly and may destroy more indirectly. Thus, countries heavily endowed with exportable natural resources…
read more >>Taking Off Into Sustained, Equitable Growth:Lessons From Successes And Failures
Berry offers an extensive set of case studies of economies that achieved sustained high growth. Chapter 1 discusses issues surrounding growth acceleration and current challenge for underperforming developing countries and the empirical record: evidence from countries that have accelerated to high sustained growth. Chapter 2 discusses the experience of Singapore and development strategy/policy prior to…
read more >>Employment Scenarios to 2024
“The South African government adopted targets of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014. Altman assembles a set of possible scenarios for 2024 for achieving that goal. The approach is to identify the decisions required to boost job creation under different economic conditions, and to set realistic expectations for how certain market-based sectors might contribute to…
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