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PurposeThis study responds to identified challenges of poor work-readiness of many graduates and the inadequate relation between education and work. Through students' perspectives, the study examines the extent to which selected South African universities are supporting their students in developing employability skills and the influence of such employability support on students' enhanced employability.Design/methodology/approachThrough purposive sampling, information was obtained from a sample of 402 final year students at two universities in South Africa. After an exploratory factor analysis, 34 of the 35 items on the questionnaire successfully loaded for further analysis under seven components.FindingsSouth African universities that were analysed are adequately engaging their students with two of the six employability development opportunities (EDOs), while students' engagement with the other four is only to a fair extent. EDOs are found to jointly influence students' employability. The curriculum has the highest influence, followed by personal development planning, career development learning and work experience. Real-world activities and extracurricular activities were not found to influence students' self-perceived employability.Originality/valueBeyond identifying skills that graduates are expected to possess, which dominate the discussion and debate on graduate employability, this study elucidates the role of universities in providing support structures – EDOs – that enable students to establish an appropriate connection between theory and practice. It provides insight into the employability potential of South African universities and increases the universities' awareness of what they can do to ensure the production of work-ready graduates.

Purpose To a prospective employee, self-perception is a vital component of employability; to better understand employability, an exploration of this essential component and its determinants is required. Besides investigating students’ perceptions of their likelihood of success in the graduate labour market, the purpose of this paper is to examine the main influence of gender and field of study and the interaction effects of these two independent variables on students’ self-perceived employability (SPE). Design/methodology/approach Data for the study were collected from a sample of 402 final-year students, at two universities in South Africa using an adapted questionnaire. The 402 students comprised of 203 from University A and 199 from University B. In total, 166 were males and 236 females while 104 were from Management Studies, 102 from Education, 72 from Law and 124 from Science and Agriculture. The three stated hypotheses for the study were analysed using factorial ANOVA (2×4) and the Bonferroni post hoc multiple comparison test. Findings The main effects of gender and field of study on SPE are both significant, but the interactions between them are not. Male students were found to demonstrate a higher level of SPE. For field of study, Education students demonstrated the highest level of SPE. Originality/value The study shows that students, particularly those in their final year, may perceive themselves to be more employable, due to increased awareness of their improved human capital. In addition, both gender and field of study are important attributes affecting students’ SPE. The variations in SPE are indicative of students’ understanding and awareness of labour market realities, offering several implications for universities and all stakeholders of graduate employability.

In this paper, we investigate female part-time employment in South Africa. Using household survey data for South Africa from 1995 to 2004, we show that women are over-represented in part-time employment, and that the growth in part-time work has been an important feature of the feminisation of the labour force. In contrast to many studies of part-time work in other countries, however, we find evidence of a significant wage premium to female part-time employment. The premium is also robust to fixed effects estimations using Labour Force Survey panel data from 2001 to 2004, where controlling for unobservable differences increases its size. The premium persists with different hourly thresholds defining part-time employment and when we account for possible reporting errors in hours worked. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2008 Economic Society of South Africa.

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Using data from selected national household surveys we demonstrate that most of the employment growth in South Africa since the late 1990s is the result of more individuals being employed informally. We also show that the informalisation of employment in South Africa has resulted in a decline in both nominal and real mean earnings of individuals who are informally employed, possibly due to occupational crowding. Finally, we explore the informalisation and casualisation of the labour market more broadly by examining the conditions of employment of all workers in the South African labour market. Our findings suggest that while the majority of workers involved in ‘informal’ employment experience poor employment conditions, there is also a significant proportion of ‘formal’ workers employed under conditions usually associated with informality.