Unseen Economy

Shedding light on the human capital acquired by young South African job-seekers is at the heart of our work with Harambee. However, this comes with challenges.

Changing Narratives

Highlighting the skills young job-seekers gain in the unseen economy is only the first step to allowing them to mobilize their full human capital. Changing narratives surrounding skills aquired in the unseen economy is a necessary step to ensuring that job-seekers' skills are not only visible, but also credible in the eyes of their future employers. Indeed, skills acquired in the unseen economy typically suffer from negative biases from employers. Namely, a skill aquired in the unseen economy is typically not deemed as credible or mastered by young job-seekers as a skill aquired in the seen economy.

Changing narratives involves working on two fronts:

1 - Producing statistical evidence: By collecting data on the Harambee platfom and through (quasi)experiments, we aim building compelling, genuine pieces of evidence about the quality of skills aquired in the unseen economy, compared to skills aquired in the seen economy.

2 - Advocacy: By sharing success stories and making scientific evidence understandable to employers, we aim to challeging their biases regarding the skilfulness of job-seekers from the unseen economy.

How Skilled are Unseen Workers ?

Including the unseen part of the economy in an useable taxonomy of occupations and skills comes with numerous challenges linked to the difficulty to grasp the skill content of daily tasks and to the diversity of daily habits among young job-seekers. We identified 3 key challenges associated with skills acquired in the unseen economy:

• A transferability issue: skills acquired in the unseen economy may not be directly useable in formal jobs.

For instance, many care-takers acquire basic - but also sometimes quite advanced - medical skill if they have been caring for a dependent adult - either and elderly individual or someone made dependent by a physical or mental disability or disease -. However, it is very unlikely that those skills are useable in a formal setting, i.e as a doctor or a nurse, as these two occuptions require specific qualifications and trainings under strict regulations.

• A proficiency issue: the level of skill acquired in the unseen economy might compare quite poorly with the average level os skill of someone performing the same tasks in a formal job.

For instance, a youg job-seeker who has acquired cooking skills by talking care of children and feeding them may not have aquired skilled advanced enough - say, cutting techniques - to use them in a high-end restaurant.

• A likelihood issue: performing a given unseen activity does not imply using all skills potentially involved in this activty.

For instance, if a youg job seeker declares that he "prepares meals and snacks", it it very likely that they know how to prepare sandwitches and basic dishes. However, it is quite unlikely that they have advanced cooking skills like baking complex deserts - say, opera cake-.

Because of these three separate issues, skills acquired in the unseen economy lack overall credibility - or, economic terms, signaling value-. One qualifies a skill acquired in the unseen economy as "credible" if employers believe the claim of a young job-seekers declaring that they have acquired that skill in the unseen economy. This issue of credibility is not as foceful in the seen economy - although it is still problematic - as employers are less likely to cast doubts on skills acquired in a formal setup - say, a firm - or in a very identificable informal occupation - such as informal specialized seller -.

Addressing the issue of the credibility of skills acquired in the unseen economy - and therefore issues of transferability, proficiency, and likelihood - is essential to Tabiya's goal of changing narratives around unseen activities. On the one hand, our task is to highlight the skills acquired in the unseen economy. On the other hand, acting as if skills acquired in the unseen economy were as credible as skills acquired in formal jobs would do disservice to youg job-seekers from the unseen economy. Indeed, employers ultimately take iring decisions based on their own beliefs and perception of the credibility of skills.