Job flows, worker flows, and churning in South Africa

Abstract

provides economic analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research. UNU-WIDER acknowledges specific programme contribution from the National Treasury of South Africa to its project 'Regional Growth and Development in Southern Africa' and core financial support to its work programme from the governments of Denmark,

Employer characteristics and youth employment outcomes in the formal sector in South Africa: Assessment using administrative tax data

“…The probit results show that firms that are less than 26 years old are more likely to hire young people, with firms between the ages of one and five years contributing the most to creating youth employment, as indicated by the higher marginal effects of 18-35 per cent. However, we are cognizant of the fact that younger firms are also dynamic and exit the market at a higher rate than older firms; therefore this result may indicate churn in the labour market (Kerr 2016).…”

The creation of an individual panel using administrative tax microdata in South Africa

“…across IRP5 certificates, within a single year between the IRP5 certificates and ITR12 returns, and over multiple years within, and between, each data source). This process would be simple if there was a single unique identifier between each data set and across years, but the existence of identification variables is not complete in each source for each individual, as described in Kerr (2018) and Ebrahim et al (2017) for the IRP5 certificates. For example, identification variables include an individual's anonymized ID number, date of birth, and tax reference number.…”

Firm Dynamics in South Africa

“…Overall, entry and exit contribute significantly to job creation and destruction but so does employment growth at existing firms. Using the SARS-NT Panel for all sectors, Kerr (2018) finds that worker flows and job reallocation rates tend to decline with firm size.…”

“…For some firms the year of registration is missing. Indeed, other research using the SARS-NT Panel uses the first year of positive employment for birth year, rather than year of registration (Fedderke et al, 2018;Kerr, 2018).…”