The City of Cape Town leads South Africa’s cities on jobs growth over the last decade according to a new research report. The metro grew its total employment by 20,2% between 2014-2023, significantly ahead of Buffalo City (13,1%), Tshwane (12,6%), Mangaung (9,1%) and eThekwini (8,2%). Joburg (1,9% growth) and Ekurhuleni (1,6%) showed growth below the national 8% average, while Nelson Mandela Bay shed 4,4% of its jobs. See the full report here: https://bit.ly/4jLdFb9 Read more below:
‘We’re encouraged to see Cape Town’s jobs growth outpacing other cities based on a new research report. This is no accident – it is built on the back of stable good governance and infrastructure investments far exceeding that of other cities. With growth, must come the opportunity to lift more people out of poverty and into employment over time. While there is plenty more to do, we are glad that in Cape Town the prospects of finding a job shine brighter than in any other city,’ said Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
The report notes that, ‘Cape Town’s recent employment growth has been more robust and resilient than the other metros, as well as being somewhat faster’, according to the report by Prof Ivan Turok and Dr Justin Visagie of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), entitled Striking disparities in employment across South Africa: Evidence from a new spatial database.
While Cape Town’s jobs growth has managed to keep a similar pace with its fast-growing population, overall jobs growth in SA’s cities has been lacklustre in the last decade according to the report.
The main sectors driving Cape Town’s job growth have been retail and wholesale services, call centres, security, finance and insurance.
This new jobs data, drawn from SARS tax records, corroborates the most recent Stats SA Quarterly Labour Force survey for Q3 2024, showing that Cape Town retains SA’s lowest broad unemployment rate with 1,76m people employed and over 300 000 jobs added since Q1 2022.
‘The City continues to run targeted initiatives and campaigns to support our high-growth industries, which is evident in the growth in services, such as call centres over the last decade. More than R6,4 billion in investments and over 15 000 jobs were directly secured in 2024 via the City’s support to 11 Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) across sectors such as business process outsourcing (BPO), technology, clothing and textile manufacturing, and marine manufacturing. Looking ahead, my priority will be the rollout of the Productivity Efficiency Programme to assist companies, as well as the Business Retention and Expansion Initiative across the city’s industrial nodes to drive further job-creating economic growth,’ said Alderman James Vos, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth.
In contrast to Cape Town’s stability, the spatial tax research report cites ‘political instability, mismanagement and dysfunction in key metro municipalities have been major problems’. The report further emphasises the Covid pandemic as being ‘a serious setback everywhere’.
The lack of national government funding for metros is cited as ‘unfair and unreasonable’ given the rate of population growth ‘without substantial state support for public infrastructure and essential services’.
Cape Town is rising above this challenge to invest a SA-record R39,5bn in infrastructure over three years, a plan the city expects to create 130 000 construction-related jobs alone, aside from the wider economic benefits of improved infrastructure. In 2024, the City released budget data showing it spends more on infrastructure directly benefitting lower income households than the entire capital budgets of other cities (R9bn, or 75% of budget in 24/25).
