Youth population scenarios: Summary of Phase I theme papers
In 2009, the Department of Social Development commissioned the Human Sciences Research Council to produce theme papers on South Africa’s demographic transition, especially the implications of a growing youth population. A key requirement for any country to benefit from the demographic transition is to significantly broaden and deepen opportunities for young people to develop their…
read more >>Forecasting the Demand for Scarce Skills, 2001-2006.
Woolard et al study the demand for high-level human resources for the period 2001–2006 and forecast the number of new positions arising and the replacement demand over the period. They use a labour demand model to estimate the number of new positions stemming from industrial growth. The demand for engineers, natural scientists and computer-related professionals…
read more >>Wage Determination in South Africa: What Do We Know?
Wages play an important role in the broader economy from both efficiency and equity perspectives. This article considers the state of knowledge on wage determination in South Africa. It asks the following questions: Is wage setting appropriate for South Africa’s development needs? Are wages determined in alignment with employment and growth needs to achieve full…
read more >>The State of Labour Market Deracialisation
Moleke looks at the racial skills distribution in the labour market. She finds that deracialisation is happening but the pace is slow and uneven across sectors. An attempt is made to identify some of the reasons for this problem. While the reasons are not weighted in terms of importance, the need to focus on education…
read more >>Revisiting South African Employment Trends in the 1990’s
This article revisits South African employment trends recorded since 1995. In particular, it investigates whether the job losses and gains recorded by the October Household Survey jobs in the mid-1990s reflect the reality. This is done by comparing the different official data sets, and by exploring alternative sources of information for three sectors that substantially…
read more >>A comparison of the old and new weights of the LFS data: 2000-2005
This report compares the population weights from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data-sets as originally released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) with the reweighted data-sets released in September 2005. Some conclusions are also drawn about the applicability of the data for the generation of nuanced statistics.
read more >>Review of Employment and Remuneration Trends for Selected Sectors in the South African Economy
Altman et al. examine formal sector employment trends in the South African economy since the mid-1990s and assess the reliability and accuracy of employment data from a variety of sources. This was an important issue for employment research, especially during the period that the statistical agency was remodeled and nationally representative surveys on population, labour…
read more >>A Contribution to the Analysis of the Employment Creation Potential of Recycling in South Africa
Lowitt offers an overview of global trends in recycling, defined as the recovery and use of waste. She identifies innovations and explores how these innovations can be used in South Africa. It goes on to investigate the economic benefits of, and current thinking on, recycling, and suggests that waste should be seen as a national…
read more >>Analysing Intersectoral Outsourcing in South Africa
Tregenna examines whether services employment growth in South Africa can be explained by outsourcing or alternatively expanded activity. To do this, Tregenna develops a new methodology for quantifying the extent that outsourcing contributes to shifts in employment between sectors. Using occupational and sectoral data from the October Household Surveys (1997–1999) and Labour Force Surveys (2000–2005),…
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