The labor market concept tested in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

While employment issues are at the center of African household concerns and economic policy debates, there are few comprehensive analyzes of sub-Saharan African labor markets [SSA]. As if research had trouble seizing this object. The countries of the region are marked by a great shortage of formal employment, wages that provide little information on the efficiency of work, an employment relationship that is both precarious and rarely sustainable, and labor firms and institutions that are few and particularly fragile. The objective of this paper is to discuss the relevance of the labor market concept in sub-Saharan African countries. Based on a literature review and an ongoing action research, we will ask whether we can talk about labor markets in SSA countries, whether we can think of them in terms of neoclassical economic theory. The approach assumes a close alliance between empirical and theoretical research that goes back to the foundation of modern science. The result is a flexibility and a medium theoretical scope of the trends, significant cases, and hypotheses that we will advance throughout the following lines (Franck, 2009; Merton, 1951). The originality of this study is that it combines an interrogation of the rationality of the labor market in the context and problematic of development in sub-Saharan Africa, which can be summarized as the question of the capacity of sub-Saharan economies to significantly reduce poverty through the creation of decent employment opportunities (Zerbo, 2006). The hypothesis we defend in this research note is that the African field is resistant to the classical – i.e. Western – conception of labor markets, insofar as the various theories available are insufficient or unsuited to the reality of local markets.

JEL Classification : J01, J46,N57,O14,O55, Z1

Paper type: Theoretical Research