Demographic, employment, and wage trends in South Africa
This paper looks to uncover the growth traps and opportunities for the South African economy, with a focus on underlying labour market dynamics. We explore the potential of South Africa’s demographic dividend. We also consider the structure of the labour market and the growth-employment interactions, which uncover the skills-biased labour demand path of the economy and a rising trend in the use of labour brokers to source temporary workers. Finally, we show a new labour market trend has emerged: a rise in the share of public sector employment along with higher conditional returns to public sector workers than to those in the private sector.
Haroon Bhorat, Karmen Naidoo, Morne Oosthuizen and Kavisha Pillay
UNU-WIDER Working Paper: WP/2015/141