South African Market Labour Market Trends: An Analysis of 1995 and 1999 Labour Statistics

This chapter focuses on a fundamental issue in the South African domestic economy, namely, the inability of the labour market to create employment over the medium to long-term. This poor performance of the labour market has been well recorded; however, the intention in this chapter to gain more insight into the most recent statistics on the employment performance. In doing so, the study will utilise the available household surveys, to analyse employment shifts in South Africa between 1995 and 1999. First, the analysis will detail the descriptive statistics that explain the economy’s recent labour demand trends. Second, these labour demand changes will be compared with the changes that have occurred, over the same period, in the quantum of new individuals entering the labour force. In doing so, it is hoped that it will deliver a tight description of the key challenge that faces the domestic labour market, namely that of significantly raising the number of job opportunities that are made available to the unemployed and future work-seekers. The chapter concludes with some generic policy issues that the State could consider in dealing with these multifaceted challenges in the labour market. These policy conjectures cover the gamut of labour demand and supply interventions, with a particular focus on some of the key supply-side factors that are open to manipulation by the State.