Five million jobs: How to add five million new jobs to the South African economy over the next five years

Jobs provide self-respect, independence and fulfilment. Productive work is the bedrock of democracy and human development. South Africa needs jobs: it needs them more urgently than ever, and it needs them in the kind of numbers we have never created before.

Towards the end of 2008, the Centre for Development and Enterprise and Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) brought together some leading South Africans to think ‘out of the box’ about unemployment and creating a really large number of new jobs so that every South African who needs a job will be able to find one.

This publication is a result of that discussion.

:: Click below to download the report and papers in PDF format

Media coverage:

Fresh proposals for solving SA's job crisis, CDE Media Release, 27 May 2009
Enough talk, it's time for action, Ann Bernstein and Simon Dagut, The Star, 27 May 2009
The urgent, practical work of creating jobs for SA's young, James Motlatsi, Jayendra Naidoo and Ann Bernstein, Business Day, 28 May 2009
How to create a million new jobs in KZN, Ann Bernstein, The Witness, 29 May 2009
A job for every South African, Ann Bernstein, Adcorp Holdings Employment Quarterly, May 2010

Working papers:

5 Million Jobs Working Paper 1 - South Africa and the global economic crisis, Stephan Malherbe
5 Million Jobs Working Paper 2 - South Africa's employment crisis: prognosis and possibilities, Nicoli Nattrass
5 Million Jobs Working Paper 3 - Opening the door: practical ways to reduce youth unemployment, CDE Research Team
5 Million Jobs Working Paper 4 - Realistic strategies for a million jobs: the case of KwaZulu-Natal, Jeff McCarthy