Employment Vulnerability in Cameroon’s Private Sector
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Date
2018-05-22
Authors
Njang Vera Anweh
Ndamsa Dickson Thomas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research consortium
Abstract
This study aims to empirically investigate the distribution, sources and
consequences of employment vulnerability among private sector workers across
subgroups in Cameroon. We construct an employment vulnerability index using
the 2005 and 2010 Cameroon employment and informal sector surveys (EES I and II).
Results indicate that, in terms of employment vulnerability, the youth dominate the
adults, the informal sector dominates the formal sector. and the female dominate the
male. The results further show that the labour force in other cities dominate the labour
force in Yaoundé and Douala. The incidence of employment vulnerability among
the private sector labour force increased between 2005 and 2010. Interestingly, we
found that the responsiveness of private sector income to an increase in employment
vulnerability witnessed a drop between 2005 and 2010 in the private sector, across
gender and age group. Our results showed that people without tertiary education and
those in rural areas are exposed to vulnerable employment. We found that formal
sector employment correlates negatively with employment vulnerability. Employment
vulnerability generally reduces monthly income in the private sector. The effect of
employment vulnerability on income is gender neutral, but adults register more adverse
effects of employment vulnerability on income than the youths. These results have
implications for upgrading the skills, with emphasis on the rural areas, adults and
female workers in the fight against employment vulnerability. The results also highlight
the role that formalization of large informal sector may play in alleviating employment
vulnerability.