The Lure of Ill-Fitting Unemployment Statistics: How South Africa’s Discouraged Work Seekers Disappeared From the Unemployment Rate

References

• Adelzadeh, A., 1996. From the RDP to GEAR: the gradual embracing of neo-liberalism in economic policy. Transformation, 31, 66–95.
   Google Scholar
• Bangane, T., 1999. The unemployment problem in South Africa with specific reference to the LVTMA. Johannesburg: Magister Dissertation.
   Google Scholar
• Barchiesi, F., 2011. Precarious liberation: workers, the state, and contestes social citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
   Google Scholar
• Baxandall, P., 2004. Constructing unemployment: the politics of joblessness in east and west. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
   Google Scholar
• Broome, A., Homolar, A., and Kranke, M., 2018. Bad science: international organizations and the indirect power of global benchmarking. European journal of international relations, 24 (3), 514–539. doi: 10.1177/1354066117719320
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Broome, A. and Quirk, J., 2015. Governing the world at a distance: The practice of global benchmarking. Review of international studies, 41 (5), 819–841. doi: 10.1017/S0260210515000340
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Carmody, P., 2002. Between globalisation and (post) apartheid: The political economy of restructuring in South Africa. Journal of Southern African studies, 28, 255–275. doi: 10.1080/03057070220140694
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Chandra, V., Nganou, J., and Noel, C., 2002. South Africa - constraints to growth in Johannesburg's black informal sector - evidence from the 1999 informal sector survey. Washington, DC: World Bank.
   Google Scholar
• Clegg, L., 2010. Our dream is a world full of poverty indicators: the US, the world bank, and the power of numbers. New political economy, 15 (4), 473–492. doi: 10.1080/13563461003763170
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Cling, J.-P., 1999. La politique économique sud-africaine face à la mondialisation. Politique africaine, 73 (73), 146–158. doi: 10.3917/polaf.073.0146
   Google Scholar
• Cooley, A. and Snyder, J. eds., 2015. Ranking the world. Grading states as a tool of global governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Cousins, B., et al., 2018. Social reproduction of ‘classes of labour’ in the rural areas of South Africa: contradictions and contestations. The Journal of Peasant studies, 45 (5–6), 1060–1085. doi: 10.1080/03066150.2018.1482876
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• CSS, 1996. Living in South Africa, selected findings of the 1995 October household survey. Pretoria: CSS.
   Google Scholar
• Davis, K., et al., 2012. Governance by indicators: global power through quantification and rankings. New York: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Desrosières, A., 1998. The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Du Toit, A. and Neves, D., 2014. The government of poverty and the arts of survival: mobile and recombinant strategies at the margins of the South African economy. Journal of peasant studies, 41 (5), 833–853. doi: 10.1080/03066150.2014.894910
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Ferguson, J., 2015. Give a Man a Fish: reflections on the new politics of distribution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.
   Google Scholar
• Finance Standing Committee, 2002. minutes can be found on the archives of the website of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group. Available from: https://pmg.org.za/committee-meetings/.
   Google Scholar
• Finance Standing Committee, 2005. Minutes can be found on the archives of the website of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group. Available from: https://pmg.org.za/committee-meetings/.
   Google Scholar
• Finance Standing Committee, 2008. Minutes can be found on the archives of the website of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group. Available from: https://pmg.org.za/committee-meetings/.
   Google Scholar
• Finance Standing Committee, 2013. Minutes can be found on the archives of the website of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group. Available from: https://pmg.org.za/committee-meetings/.
   Google Scholar
• Fioramonti, L., 2013. Gross domestic problem. The politics behind the world’s most powerful number. London: Zed Books.
   Google Scholar
• Garraty, J.A., 1979. Unemployment in history. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whitheside Limited.
   Google Scholar
• Gautié, J., 2002. De l’invention du chômage à sa deconstruction. Genèses, 46 (46), 60–76. doi: 10.3917/gen.046.0060
   Google Scholar
• Gerson, J., 1981. The question of structural unemployment in South Africa. South African journal of economics, 49 (1), 7–15. doi: 10.1111/j.1813-6982.1981.tb00685.x
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Green, A., 2000. Problems of measuring participation in the labour market. In: D. Dorling, and S. Simpson, ed. Statistics in society: the Arithmetic of politics. London: Arnold, 312–323.
   Google Scholar
• Green, P., 2008. Choice, not fate. The life and times of trevor manuel. Johannesburg: Penguin books.
   Google Scholar
• Hamilton, L., 2014. Are South Africans Free? London: Bloomsbury Academic.
   Google Scholar
• Harding, A., 2014. South African unemployment: Lies and statistics. BBC, 14 November. Available from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-20324189.
   Google Scholar
• Hoskyns, C. and Rai, S., 2007. Recasting the global political economy: couting women’s unpaid work. New political economy, 12 (3), 297–317. doi: 10.1080/13563460701485268
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Hussmanns, R., Mehran, F., and Verma, V., 1990. Surveys of economically active population, employment, unemployment and underemployment: An ILO manual on concepts and methods. Geneva: ILO.
   Google Scholar
• IOL, 2005. Manuel is too glib about unemployment. Available from: https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/opinion/manuel-is-too-glib-about-unemployment-749442.
   Google Scholar
• Isaacs, G., 2016. A national minimum wage for South Africa. Johannesburg: NMW-RI.
   Google Scholar
• Jany-Catrice, F., 2012. La performance totale: nouvel esprit du capitalisme? Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.
   Google Scholar
• Jerven, M., 2013. Poor numbers: how we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Kantor, B., 1980. Blacks: Is there unemployment? Businessmen’s law, 9 (104-7), 143–144.
   Google Scholar
• Kelley, J.G., 2017. Scorecard diplomacy. Grading states to Influence their reputation and behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Khan, A., Wales, J., and Stuart, E., 2015. Country priorities for data development: what does history tell us? London: ODI.
   Google Scholar
• Kingdon, G. and Knight, J., 2001. What have we learnt about unemployment from microdatasets in South Africa? Social Dynamics, 27 (1), 79–95. 10.1080/02533950108458705.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Koelble, T.A., 2004. Economic policy in the post-colony: South Africa between Keynesian remedies and neoliberal pain. New political economy, 9 (1), 57–78. doi: 10.1080/1356346042000190385
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lehohla, P., 2002. The National Statistics System: Our Challenge. Presentation at Paris21.
   Google Scholar
• Lepenies, P., 2013. Die Macht der einen Zahl: eine politische Geschichte des Bruttoinlandsprodukts. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.
   Google Scholar
• Linsi, L. and Mügge, D., 2019. Globalization and the growing defects of international economic statistics. Review of international political economy, DOI:10.1080/09692290.2018.1560353.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lloyd, N. and Leibbrandt, M. 2013. How do the non-searching unemployed feel about their situation? On the definition of unemployment. Econ3(3, 25 June. Available from: http://www.econ3(3.org/article/how-do-non-searching-unemployed-feel-about-their-situation-definition-unemployment.
   Google Scholar
• Masood, E., 2016. The great Invention. The story of GDP and the making and unmaking of the modern world. New York: Pegasus Books.
   Google Scholar
• Mbeki, T., 2005. Letter from the president. ANC today, 5 (20), 20–26. May.
   Google Scholar
• Merten, M., 2016. SA Unemployment and the community survey: it’s complicated. Daily Maverick, 24 March. Available from: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-03-24-sa-unemployment-and-the-community-survey-its-complicated/.
   Google Scholar
• Meth, C., 2009. Why waste money on quarterly labour force Surveys? Waste it on youth development instead!. Transformation critical perspectives on Southern Africa, 71 (1), 76–102. doi: 10.1353/trn.0.0046
   Google Scholar
• Moon, J. and Richardson, J., 1985. Unemployment in the UK: politics and policies. London: Gower.
   Google Scholar
• Mügge, D., 2019. International economic statistics: biased Arbiters in global affairs? Fudan journal of humanities and social sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-019-00255-5.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• PCAS, 2003. Towards a ten year review, synthesis report on implementation of government programmes. Pretoria: Office of the Presidency.
   Google Scholar
• Porter, T., 1995. Trust in numbers. The Pursuit of objectivity in Science and public life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Posel, D., Casale, D., and Vermaak, C., 2014. Job search and the measurement of unemployment in South Africa. South African journal of economics, 82, 66–80. doi: 10.1111/saje.12035
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Rogan, M. and Reynolds, J., 2015. The working poor in South Africa, 1997–2012. Grahamstown: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University.
   Google Scholar
• Rogerson, C.M., 1992. The absorptive capacity of the informal sector in the South African City. In: D. M. Smith, ed. The apartheid city and beyond. London: Routledge, 161–172.
   Google Scholar
• Salais, R., Baverez, N., and Reynaud, B., 1986. L’invention du chômage. Paris: Puf.
   Google Scholar
• Scully, B., 2016. From the shop floor to the kitchen table: the shifting centre of precarious workers’ politics in South Africa. Review of African political economy, 43 (148), 295–311. doi: 10.1080/03056244.2015.1085378
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Sengenberger, W., 2011. Beyond the measurement of unemployment and underemployment. Geneva: ILO.
   Google Scholar
• Simkins, C., 1982. Structural unemployment revisited. SALDRU Fact Sheet No. 1, University of Cape Town.
   Google Scholar
• Standing, G., Sender, J., and Weeks, J., 1996. Restructuring the labour market, The South African challenge. Geneva: ILO.
   Google Scholar
• Stapleford, T., 2009. The cost of living in America: A political history of economic statistics, 1880–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Stats SA, 1998. Unemployment and employment in South Africa. Pretoria.
   Google Scholar
• Stats SA, 1999. Annual report. Pretoria.
   Google Scholar
• Stats SA, 2009. Annual report. Pretoria.
   Google Scholar
• Stats SA, 2018. Quarterly labour force Survey, 1st quarter. Pretoria.
   Google Scholar
• Taylor, M., 2016. The Political Economy of Statistical Capacity: A Theoretical Approach (Discussion Paper IDB-DP-471). Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank.
   Google Scholar
• Terreblanche, S., 2002. A history of inequality in South Africa, 1652–2002. Scottsville: University of Natal Press, KMM Review.
   Google Scholar
• Topalov, C., 1994. Naissance du chômeur, 1880–1910. Paris: Albin Michel.
   Google Scholar
• Van der Berg, S., 2013. Adcorp’s employment and unemployment figures are not taken seriously by researchers – yet they can do much harm. Econ3(3, 12 February. Available from: http://www.econ3(3.org/article/adcorp%E2%80%99s-employment-and-unemployment-figures-are-not-taken-seriously-researchers-%E2%80%93-yet-they.
   Google Scholar
• Ward, M., 2004. Quantifying the world: UN ideas and statistics. New York: Indiana University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Wittenberg, M. and Kerr, A. 2012. Criticisms of the adcorp employment index. DataFirst, University of Cape Town, February. Available from: http://nationalminimumwage.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/0033-Criticisms-of-the-Adcorp-index.pdf.
   Google Scholar
• Yu, D., 2009. The comparability of labour force survey and quarterly labour force survey. Department of economics, Bureau for economic research, University of Stellenbosch.
   Google Scholar
• Zimmermann, B., 2006. Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland. Zur Enstehung Einer Sozialen Kategorie. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
   Google Scholar