Changing labour market conditions in South Africa

Abstract

EMPLOYMENT CREATION in the South African labour market has been less than healthy for some period of time. Understanding conditions within South African labour markets is crucial to developing a strategy designed to improve employment creation in the future. The present paper is to be understood as a preliminary study of the determinants of labour demand within the South African economy.1 The main focus of the present paper is not to present estimation results, nor to provide a comprehensive explanation for the incidence of certain features, but to review economic sectoral panel data on labour market conditions in South Africa. Given the problems frequently encountered with respect to South African labour data, it is useful to undertake preliminary exploratory data analysis, before a more sophisticated estimation is attempted. In the discussion that follows we examine employment trends, real labour remuneration trends, and labour productivity trends. On the basis of this description we extend the investigation to a brief preliminary econometric examination of the likely forms of interaction between employment, real labour renumeration, and labour productivity. Show more