One of the most visible forms of unemployment is the men who stand at the side of the road or on corners daily, waiting for any job that may come their way. It is estimated that there are nearly 1,000 places in South Africa where a minimum of about 45,000, mostly black African men, stand, waiting to be picked up. The South African space economy is characterised by an uneven distribution of economic activities. International empirical studies have shown that there is a geographical or spatial coincidence between levels of unemployment and levels of gross domestic product per capita. The first objective of this article is to highlight some of the basic demographic dynamics of day labourers. The second is to investigate the spatial distribution of and the relationship between day labourers, unemployment and the general level of socio-economic development in South Africa. Day labourers share a number of common characteristics, but there were also obvious differences in their morale and spirit. The analyses showed that there is also a general spatial coincidence between levels of socio-economic development and the numbers of day labourers in South Africa, with a relatively high correlation coefficient between the two.
Keywords
Day labourersLevels of socio-economic developmentMultivariate statistical analysesUnemployment
Introduction
Unemployment remains one of the major macro-economic problems facing South Africa. One of the most visible forms of unemployment is the day labourers who stand at the side of the road or on street corners every day, waiting for any job that may come their way (Blaauw et al. 2006:458).
Day labouring is not restricted to South Africa. It is a global phenomenon that occurs in both developed and developing countries. Valenzuela et al. (2006) conducted a nationwide study on day labour in the USA. On any given day in the USA, approximately 117,600 workers either seek day labour jobs or work as day labourers (Valenzuela et al. 2006:
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