Lesson video

Hi there, my name is Chloe and I'm a geography field studies tutor.

This lesson is called Contrasting Urban Economies in Developing, Emerging, and Developed Countries, and it forms part of the urban change unit of work.

In this lesson, we're going to be looking at lots of different types of employment and how they vary in different regions of the world.

Let's get started.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to understand the links between a country's level of development and the nature of employment there.

There are three key terms for us to review first of all.

Let's start with this one, economic sector.

This is a category of economic activity, where jobs are grouped together based on their type of work.

Formal employment is employment that is officially recognised and regulated, and informal employment is employment that lacks official recognition and has no regulation.

The lesson is in two parts.

We're gonna first of all look at what the different economic sectors of employment actually are, and then we're going to be looking at something slightly different, a different way of categorising employment, if you like.

And that's how we look at informal and formal employment.

But let's start with those different economic sectors.

So there's different urban economies all over the world.

There are four different sectors of employment, and what we're gonna be doing is applying those economic sectors to those different regions and those different countries.

We're then gonna look, as I say, at that formal and informal employment and how that kind of equates into different working conditions, what it's actually like for the people who are employed in those different areas.

So let's start there.

Those four sectors of employment.

Now, the first one is primary employment or primary industry.

This is things like collecting and harvesting primary products such as cotton, milk, oil, metal ore.

There's lots of things which are the raw products that come from the land or from the sea, and then they get turned into other things.

That initial collecting and harvesting is the primary industries.

So things like farming, mineral extraction, forestry and fishing.

Things you can see in the pictures there would be counted as parts of the primary industry.

Then we've got the secondary industries, and this is where we're taking those raw materials and we are making something from them.

So traditionally manufacturing a new product from a primary one.

So things like the cotton, which will have been harvested in our primary industry is then turned into something like a textile, a section of cloth or something like that.

It also includes taking those products and then turning them again into something new.

So we've got our cotton going to textiles.

We could then turn those textiles, those sections of cloth into actual pieces of clothing.

Our third economic sector is the tertiary sector or tertiary industries.

This is where someone is providing a service to somebody else.

So for example, you can see in our pictures here we've got teachers.

We've got people doing customer service in shops, in restaurants, cafes, any form of hospitality.

Also, people like doctors and nurses, dentists who work in healthcare.

They would also be part of the tertiary sector.

And finally, we have the quaternary industries or the quaternary economic sector.

So these are people who are involved in science, the realms of research and development, things like engineering, digital and IT industries.

You can see in our examples here, things like astronauts, people who are doing design work, all of these would be included in the quaternary sector.

So let's check our understanding so far.

Which of the following sects includes one job from each of the four economic sectors? So you can see in each of the sets there, there are four jobs listed.

Which one includes a primary, a secondary, a tertiary, and a quaternary job? Let's look at the options.

So A, fisherman, waiter, a software developer, web designer.

B, baker, nurse, teacher, engineer.

C, a miner, builder, doctor, and scientist.

Or D, a farmer, tailor, journalist and soldier.

Which one of those includes one from each of the four economic sectors? Pause the video here so you can have another look through those options and then come back to me.

Okay, so let's look at them each in turn.

Let's start with A, fisherman, primary, waiter, tertiary; software developer, quaternary, web designer also quaternary.

So we know it's not A.

Let's look at B, a baker, that's secondary.

A nurse, tertiary; teacher, tertiary; engineer, quaternary.

So we know it's not B either.

Let's look at C, a miner, primary; builder, secondary; doctor, tertiary; scientist, quaternary.

Well done if you recognise that it is option C, but let's just finish things off and look at D as well.

We've got farmer, primary, a tailor, secondary, a journalist, tertiary, and a soldier would also be in the tertiary sector.

Well done if you've got the answer C there.

Now let's look at how we can apply those different economic sectors to different countries or different regions of the world as well.

So if we're looking purely at developing countries, we're looking at this pattern of change in the different economic sectors.

We have a high amount, but decreasing level of primary employment.

That purple line you can see there is coming down over time.

You've also got rising levels of secondary, that's our green line and tertiary, our blue line there.

So those are rising up over time as well.

So effectively people are moving from the primary industries into the secondary and tertiary styles of employment.

This means that workers are developing a wider range of skills as they move away from the primary industries.

Now let's look at emerging countries.

You can see something slightly different here.

Here we've got really high levels of secondary employment.

Lots of people are going to be employed in manufacturing industries in these countries.

We can also see though we've got a rapid rise of tertiary employment.

That blue line is going, is rising very, very quickly there just as our purple line, our primary is also decreasing.

It's declining very rapidly too.

Workers have increased levels of income, which means they're able to spend more in the service sector.

So what we have here is lots more people employed at a higher income level in secondary employment in manufacturing, but that means they've got more personal disposable income.

So they're starting to spend a little bit more as well, which means our tertiary sector is starting to rise at the same time.

Now let's look at our developed countries.

You can see here very low levels of primary and secondary employment.

They have already decreased over time and they are much lower in terms of the percentage of people that are employed in those sectors.

But what really stands out is those that high level of tertiary employment.

And look, we've got a new sector coming in.

Our quaternary, our science and research that's rising very rapidly in our developed countries as well.

De-industrialization means that manufacturing industries are now moving to the emerging countries.

So in our developed countries, we don't have much of a manufacturing base anymore.

What's happened is we've had something called the Global Shift, and that is now moving those manufacturing industries to the emerging economies, the ones we saw in the last section.

Now this whole thing when you put it together is called the Clark-Fisher model.

It's a theoretical idea of how employment sectors relate to countries at different stages of development.

As you can see here at the start, we've got developing countries, high levels of primary, emerging countries, high levels of secondary and developed countries, high levels of tertiary.

It does something else though.

It also suggests how their relative amounts of employment in different economic sectors will change over time.

Now remember, this is theoretical.

So the idea is that once upon a time developed countries will have been at those starter points in the graph with high levels of primary and lower levels of secondary and tertiary employment.

Over time, those countries will turn into emerging economies where they have more secondary employment and then they become developed.

And that almost if you like the definition of being developed is that they have high levels of tertiary employment and the introduction of quaternary employment as well.

Now geographers are really that the Clark-Fisher model is simply a theory.

It's simply a way of thinking and organising the world.

It doesn't necessarily mean it plays out in every country, every time.

As Aisha says here, there must be developing and emerging countries that do not fit these patterns of employment.

Think about the wide variety of countries that there are in the world.

It's not gonna be true that every single one is gonna follow the same pattern of development with regards to their employment sectors.

Jun says they don't have to move through these stages of different economic sectors just because developed countries have.

Probably, you can guess already that the Clark-Fisher model was developed by people who lived in developed countries.

They saw what had happened to their countries over time and assume that developing countries are gonna follow the same pattern.

And of course we know that won't necessarily be the case all the time.

Let's look at India for example.

India is an emerging country, but has a highly developed quaternary sector in IT industries and space science.

It doesn't fit on the Clark-Fisher model in a really neat way.

Now let's check our understanding of those ideas.

Complete the sentences with the missing words.

Have a read through the paragraph and do pause the video so you can really take it all in and then come back to me with some of your ideas.

Okay, let's see what you got.

Theoretically, emerging countries have the highest levels of secondary employment.

Manufacturing industries have moved into these countries from developed countries.

Remember I called it the Global Shift.

New workers in the secondary sector earn more than they did in the primary sector, so they have more money to spend on services.

So what we know is that that sector will also rise at the same time.

Well done if you've got those three words in the right places.

Our first practise task of today, complete the table by placing the bank of phrases into the correct columns.

There are two phrases that do not belong in any column, so watch out for those.

We've got developing countries, emerging countries, and developed countries as our three column headings.

And then you can see from the list here, we've got descriptions of what is happening to different sectors.

Have a really close look at the wording that's been used in those descriptors.

So do pause the video and then see if you can place the phrases in the right places in the table.

But remember, there's two that won't fit anywhere.

Pause the video and then come back to me.

Right, let's have a look at your answers.

Let's start with our developing countries.

Well done if you recognise that it should have high levels of primary employment or high level in the primary sector, but a rising secondary and tertiary sector.

Our emerging countries have a level of manufacturing, so that's the highest secondary sector, but they also have that rapidly rising tertiary sector.

Developed countries have a rapidly rising quaternary sector, our science and research, and it has the lowest level of primary sector.

So hopefully you've got two leftover, falling tertiary sector.

That doesn't happen in any of our countries.

So that's a red herring.

And we've also got a rapidly rising primary sector.

Likewise, that is not really happening anywhere in the world.

So both of those should not appear in any of your columns.

Hope you got the right answers there.

Let's now move on to the second part of this lesson where we're going to be looking at formal and informal employment.

The employment discussed so far has been formal.

This means it's officially recognised, it's taxed by the government and it's highly regulated.

Now that doesn't mean that it's a particular type of economic sector that we've already discovered and not others.

For example, in our pictures here, you can see things like farming, manufacturing, medicine, and science.

All of those could be classed as formal employment.

Informal employment, on the other hand, has no regulation or system of taxation.

Here's some examples of the kind of thing, which might fall under informal employment.

Beach vendors, people on the beach selling sun hats and sunglasses and that kind of thing.

People on the street who are giving services like shoeshiners or street barbers, that kind of thing.

Then people who are informal recyclers, waste pickers, people like that.

People who run their own ride-share service.

So they're offering a taxi service in a rather informal manner.

And we've got people who work within the home but for money.

So people at home weavers, they're producing goods not in a factory, in their own homes.

It's really important to remember that informal employment is not necessarily illegal.

It depends on the laws of individual countries, and in fact, in most countries, informal employment is perfectly legal.

However, illegal employment in established companies would be classed as informal.

So if an established company were to employ slave labour or child labour, that would be classed as informal.

Informal employment is extremely common, and it's a key element of many countries' economies.

Don't think it's also just applying to developing and emerging countries.

There is informal employment in every country of the world.

An estimated 2 billion people that 60% of workers earn money this way.

So let's check our understanding of that.

Why might a country's government want to reduce the amount of informal employment? Is it because informal employment generates no tax for the government to collect and to use? Is it because informal employees are criminals or is it because informal employment encourages people to migrate out of cities? Have a pause now and have a think about that and then come back to me with the correct answer.

Well done if you recognise that the answer is A, it's all about taxation.

Some countries want to kind of reduce the amount of employment in the informal sectors because they're not generating any tax from those employees.

Now, there is another side to this and that's that many countries will very happily turn a blind eye to informal employment because the alternative is something even worse.

If people aren't employed informally, the likelihood is that they would actually be living in high levels of poverty.

A government would rather people with generating an income for themselves be that informally or formally than living in poverty.

So many countries actually don't worry too much about informal employment.

Now let's look at what the different working conditions are.

Informal and informal employment.

Most employment in developed countries is formal and it's associated with good working conditions.

Now what do we mean by good working conditions? Well, it's things like fair pay.

It includes payment for overtime.

There's gonna be minimum wage standards.

We have that in this country.

It also means there's gonna be laws around how old you have to be and the maximum number of hours that you can work.

You will have income protection, things like sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay.

So if you have to type, take time away from work for different reasons, you're not going to be losing money because of that.

There are also regulations around health and safety at work.

Often you have to undergo mandatory training depending on your job, and it means that if something happens to you at work, there is a layer of law and protection which will help you.

Developing countries tend to have more informal employment.

Unfortunately, working conditions in developing countries are not always good.

Places of work be that buildings or the type of land and the nature of the work may actually be unsafe.

There are fewer checks on working regulations such as child labour.

This means that sometimes children and adults can be exploited in the nature of the work that they're doing.

It could be that there are low rates of pay in work, and it also means that sometimes there is slave labour.

Slave labour doesn't necessarily always mean that people are being held against their will to work.

It could also mean that people are not being paid for the work which they undertake.

There can be long hours of work, and it's often very labour intensive, very hard on the body to do some types of work.

There's also no security of income such as sick pay.

We have to remember that sometimes the working conditions are very hard and unsafe, so your chance of getting sick or injured at work are much higher.

If that were to happen to you, there's no security of your job or your income.

Let's now listen in on a conversation between Alex, Jacob, and Sofia.

Alex says, "Working in a developing country sounds awful.

If you are unskilled, I guess you do not have much of a choice." Hmm, let's see what Jacob says in reply.

"It won't be the same in all developing countries.

And remember, the UK isn't perfect either." Jacob is right to point out that every developing country has its own story.

It has its own sets of regulations and rules, and different companies will be working in different countries as well.

So it's very difficult to say that the situation is gonna be the same in every single developing country and absolutely right to point out that the UK does not have perfect work and labour laws either.

Sofia points out, "And don't think just because someone works informally in a developing country that they are unskilled.

Some may not always have formal qualifications, but they have lots of expertise." Sofia's hit on a really, really important point there.

If somebody is employed in the informal sector, yes, they might not have a qualification on a certificate or anything like that, but that doesn't mean they're unskilled.

Sometimes they can be really highly skilled in very specific areas.

For example, a street vendor won't be carrying around a calculator or a till or their phone to be able to do any of the maths.

They will do it all in their head, and they'll be able to do it very, very quickly.

Emerging countries are moving from having large amounts of informal employment to formal employment.

Foreign companies investing in these countries may demand that working conditions have to be improved and maintained at a certain standard before they will invest.

So those companies are actually making demands sometimes on those countries and saying, you need to raise the bar in terms of your working conditions before we will put our money into your businesses.

Now, true or false, people working in informal employment are unskilled.

Have a think about what was said in the three-way conversation between the children and then come back to me with the right answer.

Right, well done if you see that it's false, but why is it false? Yes, so though the work is low paid, it does not mean that people have no skills.

They often have high levels of expertise in their area of work.

Our second task of today's lesson, Laura is discussing informal employment, but she's made many mistakes.

Rewrite Laura's statement so that it contains correct information about informal employment.

Let's see what Laura says.

Everyone who works in a developing country is employed informally.

This means they receive a high amount of income, but in a job which is unregulated.

An example of informal employment would be a nurse in a hospital.

Informal employment is often unsafe, but employees get sick pay if they are injured at work.

Now, I think you can already see there's quite a few mistakes there.

So pause the video and have another look through what Laura has said and then rewrite that statement so it contains the correct information.

I'll show you what I think it should say.

Right, here's something that your answer may include.

Many, but not all people who work in a developing country are employed informally.

This means they often make a low income in a job that is unregulated.

An example of informal employment is a waste picker.

Informal employment is often unsafe and workers do not get sick pay if they are injured.

You'll of course have something slightly different, particularly in terms of your example, but that's the kind of thing you should be saying in response to Laura's mistakes.

Well done if you manage to get all those points.

Let's summarise our learning from that lesson.

The four economic sectors of employment are primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary.

The Clark-Fisher model shows how countries might have different levels of employment in each sector over time as they develop.

Work in developing countries is often informal with no regulation.

This can lead to a range of poor working conditions, such as unsafe workplaces and unchecked child labour.

Well done, it's pretty interesting to think about different sectors of work in different parts of the world and how we are similar and how we are different.

Maybe have a chat to adults in your life about their areas of work.

You can work out what sector of employment they're employed in, and whether it's formal or informal.