The measurement of employment status in South Africa using cohort analysis, 1994-2004

Branson, Nicola; Wittenberg, Martin

The measurement of employment status in South Africa using cohort analysis, 1994-2004

Journal Article

2007

Journal Title

South African Journal of Economics

Link to Journal

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2007.00113.x/full

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Economics

Faculty

Faculty of Commerce

Abstract

We analyse trends in employment, unemployment and labour force participation by simple graphical techniques, using all the October Household Surveys and the September Labour Force Surveys. We show that African male employment in 1995 seems high, when compared to all the other surveys. Furthermore much of the increase in African female labour force participation is concentrated in the period 1998 to 2000, which suggests that measurement and sampling changes may be partially responsible for the trend. We track cohorts of individuals over the eleven years for which we have data. We show that young people are leaving school earlier, while being better educated than their elders. They are not, however, being absorbed into employment at a faster rate. This has led to a spike in youth unemployment.