Dr Miriam Altman Executive director

Focus areas

Evidence-based employment scenarios		Employment monitoring
Macro-economy, economic bias & employment		Employment-oriented industry studies
The informal economy		Government employment creation programmes
Labour markets and social policy		Migration
Regional dynamics		Social dialogue
Employment policy network		Food Security, Agriculture and Rural Development

Recent features
The jobless youth crisis: Time bomb SA's youth are a ticking bomb. As overused as this metaphor is, it is accurate. Youth unemployment cannot be solved on its own, no matter how well the economy performs. Carol Paton looks at how SA is failing its youth and why it's critical that something be done.  26 March 2010    Read the Financial Mail feature and related research papers
Creating jobs in tough times The global economic downturn poses serious challenges to SA's hopes of halving unemployment between 2004 and 2014, a target most recently reaffirmed in the election manifesto of the African National Congress. Just as the South African economy seemed to be getting on track, the global economy imploded. 13 January 2009    Read the Business Day article and related research paper
HSRC comments on Nersa's ruling on electricity price Additional 13.3% electricity price hike as of 1 July 2008 Ruling - consistent with the HSRC modelling work on electricity pricing - seen to be the right step towards cost recovery from industry and high income households, at a pace that will not excessively damage Eskom or the economy. 19 June 2008    Read media release and related background papers
Employment policy outline needed Meeting government's goal of halving unemployment will require some big budget choices ahead. Treasury needs to be more explicit about the choices that need to be made and how they will contribute to reducing unemployment. 28 February 2008   Read the Financial Mail (FM) feature and related background papers
Answers to SA's job crisis Jobs remain the SA economy's Achilles heel. The reliance on growth alone will not achieve the target of halving unemployment by 2014. 26 October 2007   Read the FM cover feature and related background papers

Overview of the Centre for Poverty, Employment and Growth

Unemployment is one of the most pressing economic and social problems facing South Africa today. The social impact is particularly severe in the context of a fragile social safety net for the poor and a small underdeveloped informal sector. It is accepted that economic growth is an important contributor to addressing unemployment and poverty. But so is deepening the employment absorbing capacity of that growth path.

The South African government has adopted targets to 2014, including the halving of unemployment and poverty. There are a number of important initiatives to reach these targets at all levels of Government, and in cooperation with civil society. AsgiSA has become a critical coordinating effort in identifying binding constraints to growth, as well as stimulatory activity to promote wider economic participation. AsgiSA has focused the minds and mobilised stakeholders around an essential set of policy issues, ranging from macro-economic policy, infrastructure & logistics, education & skills, competition, SME regulation, sector investment and state capacity.

Certainly, these actions could make a positive impact on shared growth. But do we have a sense of whether they are correctly targeted and bold enough to achieve Government’s employment and poverty targets by 2014, and ultimately surpass them thereafter?

The HSRC’s Centre for Poverty, Employment and Growth (CPEG) has drawn together a set of ‘evidence-based’ employment scenarios. These are scenarios of the economic structure of South Africa should minimum social and economic targets be met. It complements other initiatives, in that it focuses on the employment question: approaches are being developed to specifically understand how market dynamics and policy interventions impact on employment and poverty. This involves the development of integrated economy-wide analysis, as well as consideration of specific policy areas that impact on the whole picture. A number of practical options have been identified, and each one has political, financial and bureaucratic implications.

The HSRC has established CPEG, to specifically focus on developing evidence-based employment scenarios, which include both high level scenarios, plus contributions to monitoring and policy formulation. This initiative operates in a way that resembles a ‘think-tank’ model: it involves a ‘hub-and-spokes’ model of research coordination with an emphasis on drawing together and stimulating the best available knowledge in the HSRC, in South Africa and globally. This is being achieved through policy research, the initiation of demonstration projects to test ideas, the facilitation of ideas through roundtables and policy design work, and the establishment of an interactive website posting the best available thinking on employment policy. The Initiative forms part of an ongoing effort to deepen HSRC's contribution to effective policy-making, and broader societal dialogue on critical issues.