{"id":246711,"date":"2023-10-04T07:37:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T07:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobtechalliance.com\/?p=246711"},"modified":"2024-03-18T06:17:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T06:17:59","slug":"what-is-a-job-how-to-measure-job-creation-on-jobtech-platforms-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stage.jobtechalliance.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/04\/what-is-a-job-how-to-measure-job-creation-on-jobtech-platforms-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"What is \u2018a job\u2019? How to measure job creation on jobtech platforms in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Chris Maclay<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started my career in youth employment over a decade ago, a prevailing narrative pervaded the NGO space: \u201cThis is Jessica. She used to be unemployed. Now she has a chicken. And she is therefore employed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This narrative wasn\u2019t true then and it isn\u2019t true now. Jessica wasn\u2019t all of a sudden employed<\/em> because she gained one part-time income stream from her chicken. Moreover, she probably wasn\u2019t unemployed<\/em> before. Few young Africans really are. They simply can\u2019t afford to be. In fact, Africa has a lower unemployment<\/em> rate than the world average<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is huge underemployment<\/em> – 80% of jobs on the continent are in the informal sector<\/a>, with often low pay and insecurity. Adding new income streams (or better or more resilient income streams) is important, but does it necessarily count as \u2018a job created\u2019? What if it was just a dollar? What if this additional income stream caused the loss of another income stream? If any single additional income stream doesn\u2019t necessarily truly constitute \u2018a job created\u2019, what does? These questions are all the starker in the jobtech space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Job Counting, Not Just Chicken Counting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jobmatching platforms (Brighter Monday, Jobberman, Fuzu, etc) should be relatively easy to count jobs from: an individual matched to a full-time role equals one job created (let\u2019s leave the attribution question for another day). Most other jobtech platforms \u2014 from ride hailing (think: Uber), to gigmatching (think: Taskrabbit), to creator platforms (think: YouTube) \u2014 offer largely, though not exclusively, part-time jobs. Not because they don\u2019t necessarily provide a good income, but because most people tend to combine these income streams with others in their portfolio of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even for ride hailing, which in Africa (as opposed to Uber\u2019s original design in the USA) usually constitutes a full-time role, few drivers actually earn their full salaries from any one app. Rather, they multi-home, taking jobs from Uber, Bolt, Yego, and any other number of ride hailing apps on their phone. So at what point can any one of these platforms say that they have created a job? This blog will explore how to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A chicken: a job? (Photo Credit: Rachel Vine)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Five Fallacies of Jobtech Job Counting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve faced this counting challenge in the Jobtech Alliance, where we support a range of startups through Growth Support<\/a>, to enable them to create: (1) More<\/em> jobs, through market expansion or launch of new products; (2) Better quality<\/em> jobs, through higher user incomes or utilization; (3) More inclusive<\/em> jobs, reaching traditionally marginalized populations like women and refugees. We\u2019ve built a model for counting jobs influenced by a range of phenomena that we call the five fallacies of jobtech job counting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Jobs that are not jobs at all<\/strong>: We see a huge number of platforms claiming \u2018empowerment\u2019 through mere usage. This is very often perpetuated by donors seeking scale numbers. When the formal sector is so small in Africa<\/a>, a traditional job-matching platform can feasibly have millions of users (jobseekers) registering accounts and (possibly though not necessarily) looking for jobs, but only hundreds of them actually getting jobs. This is not to understate the value of e-learning platforms, or the learning experience that can come from applying for jobs, but these are not jobs in themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Jobs that are bad jobs: <\/strong>Some platforms provide work that is unsafe (from construction gigs without PPE to online work full of cyber-bullying), or pays extremely poorly. This is often a concern for the ride hailing platforms, which \u2014 on the face of it \u2014 often provide high gross incomes, but when one considers costs (fuel, car leasing) can result in take-home incomes that are far below minimum wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Jobs that don\u2019t matter at all\/are barely jobs<\/strong>: We\u2019d argue that a platform that matches people to gigs, but only ever gives them a single KES 500 or NGN 2,500 or CFA 2,000 (<$5) per gig is not a job creator. If we counted any single payout as a job, AI kingpin Sam Altman\u2019s crypto identity initiative Worldcoin would probably be Africa\u2019s biggest employer in 2023, having given 350,000 young Kenyans<\/a> $50 to seize their identity<\/s> \u201cempower\u201d them through blockchain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Jobs that don\u2019t really matter for the context of the user<\/strong>: We could decide on some income cut-offs, but these are difficult to standardize. A reliable additional $30 a month for someone displaced in northern Nigeria could be an incredibly meaningful contribution to a livelihood, but that same $30 for an Egyptian user of a platform which matches lawyers to full time jobs would not. Context and user is everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Jobs that are part-time by design<\/strong>: While we would naturally want every user of a platform to be earning the equivalent of full time roles, the shifting nature of work (indeed, the \u2018future of work\u2019 at large as we\u2019ve discussed previously<\/a>) is likely going to involve more and more people finding their \u2018employment\u2019 by a portfolio of work rather than any single \u2018job\u2019. Part-time jobs aren\u2019t inherently a bad thing. And many platforms\u2019 business and operational models mean that they ultimately provide part-time work by design. Examples include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n