Deindustrialization, Professionalization and Racial Inequality in Cape Town, 1980-2010¶

Literature › Works

Owen Crankshaw (2012). Deindustrialization, Professionalization and Racial Inequality in Cape Town, 1980-2010. Urban Affairs Review 48(6).


Type	journal article
Scope	Post-1994 South African economy
Method	descriptive quantitative
Period studied	1980–2010
Regions	Cape Town, Western Cape
Themes	inequality poverty unemployment, labour markets wages, demography urbanisation, manufacturing industrial policy, transition post apartheid, education human capital
Citation key	`crankshaw2012`

Argument¶

Crankshaw tests two theories of how deindustrialization shapes racial inequality: the 'polarization' thesis (growth of high-wage professional and low-wage service jobs) and the 'professionalisation and unemployment' thesis. Using census and labour force survey data for Cape Town, he finds that the occupational structure has professionalized rather than polarized. Black workers (Africans, coloureds, Indians) have taken a rapidly growing share of professional, managerial and middle-income clerical and sales jobs. Racial inequality persists mainly through high black unemployment, which he attributes partly to manufacturing job losses and partly to labour force growth outpacing employment growth. The emerging spatial order is one of racially mixed middle-class suburbs versus black working-class areas with high unemployment, not a simple white/black divide.

Evidence and method¶

Population Censuses 1980-2001 (including 1991 and 1996), the 2007 Community Survey, and Labour Force Surveys 2000-2010 (Western Cape only), all from Statistics South Africa; 2001 neighbourhood-level census data and Group Areas records analysed by Graham (2007); Borel-Saladin (2006) and Borel-Saladin and Crankshaw (2009) for earlier trends.

Findings¶

Occupational change in Cape Town 1980-2007 was professionalisation, not polarization. (p. 5)

The analysis of changes in the occupational structure of employment in Cape Town over the period 1980 to 2007 show a clear, long-term trend of occupational professionalisation, rather than polarization
The polarization claim based on South African Cities Network data stemmed from a transposition error in that report. (p. 5)

the data for ‘semi- and unskilled’ employment was transposed with those for ‘skilled’ employment.
Unemployment rose sharply with deindustrialization, from 4% in 1980 to a peak of 29% in 2001. (p. 7)

In 1980, the unemployment rate in Cape Town was a mere 4%. By 1991, it had risen to 14%, reached 20% in 1996 and, after peaking at 29% in 2001, fell to 24% by 2007.
The labour force grew faster than employment, an additional cause of unemployment. (p. 7)

the average rate of employment growth between 1980 and 2007 was 2.7% per annum, compared to the substantially faster rate of growth of the labor force, which was 3.6% per annum.
The white share of professional, managerial and technical jobs in Cape Town fell sharply. (p. 8)

the white share of middle-class jobs declined from 75% in 1980 to 46% in 2007
The white share of clerical, service and sales jobs collapsed, so most new middle-income jobs went to black workers. (p. 9)

the white share of Clerical, Service and Shop and Sales jobs declined from 55% in 1980 to 19% in 2007.
Manufacturing shed a substantial number of manual jobs, mostly held by coloured workers, partly offset by service-sector manual jobs. (p. 11)

the manufacturing sector shed almost 38,000 machine operators, assemblers, drivers and artisans, most of whom were colored workers
Overall racial inequality is probably not declining, because black occupational gains are offset by black unemployment. (p. 11)

As a result of these contradictory trends, overall racial inequality is probably not declining.
Segregation indices understate desegregation because the white population share fell. (p. 14)

Since the white population of Cape Town declined from 33 per cent in 1980 to 19 per cent in 2001, this change has the effect of increasing the value of the segregation index.
A new spatial divide between the employed and the unemployed is emerging. (p. 15)

In certain neighborhoods, such as Khayelitsha, Bloekombos, Gugulethu and Philippi, the unemployment rate is higher than 40%.