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

Unemployment refuses unambiguous definition. Its statistical representation is always open to contestation, especially where labour markets differ from the Western-industrial norm. Why do countries adopt international standards even if they may fit local conditions poorly? South Africa is an exemplary case to answer this question. When Apartheid ended in the early 1990s, South African statisticians embraced the new emancipatory spirit. Their broad unemployment indicator defied international conventions but did justice to the marginalised Black population, and to Black women in particular. Since then, however, South Africa has fallen in line with the much narrower definition of the International Labour Organization (ILO), in spite of widespread criticism. Why? We find that ILO standards were not forced upon South Africa. Instead, South African statisticians themselves embraced international standards to repel charges of arbitrary or politically motivated numbers. Counterintuitively, international standards become alluring precisely when doubts about statistics’ fit with local conditions are the greatest.