At the centre of government strategy to address various dimensions of poverty in the South African context is the creation of economic opportunities. The 2010 budget allocated an additional R3.7 billion to nationally drive of employment creation initiatives. It is widely felt that different patterns of expenditure within the budget have different consequences for employment creation and that government should use the budget as a tool to tackle unemployment. The focus of this paper is mainly on quantifying and assessing trends in the incidence of major employment spending programmes by the government.

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