Winners and losers: South African labour-market dynamics between 2008 and 2010

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Retrospect

“…More than 20 years later, the standard of living for the majority remains dismal, although substantial economic progress has been achieved. During a recent 2009 national recession more than a million people exhibited wage employment, a movement associated with negative real earning changes (Cichello et al 2014 ). In 2011, 52.3 % of South Africans lived below a poverty line of 1.70 dollars per day issued by the Statistics South Africa (Republic of South Africa 2013 , 30).…”

“…Observed widespread unemployment should not indicate labour market stability. Cichello et al ( 2014 ) have identifi ed using data from the National Income Dynamics Study signifi cant levels of labour market churning in the country between 2008 and 2010, with individuals moving into and out of the labour market as well as across occupations. To alleviate poverty, the country's social welfare net has been expanded, and the total number of grant benefi ciaries in South Africa was 15.5 million (31 % of the total population) as of March 2012.…”

Getting ahead or falling behind: Findings from the second wave of the National Income Dynamics Study

“…Instead, the distribution of results suggests that some of the searching unemployed were not correctly classified by fieldworkers in the Wave 2 fieldwork. Given these concerns, the discussion of the labour market (Cichello et al, 2013) focuses on the rate of employment rather than the rate of unemployment. The second note of caution is that the high rates of attrition in the top decile (elaborated on above) may bias the analysis of income changes between 2008 and 2010.…”

“…The paper by Cichello et al (2013) uses the first two waves of NIDS to study the dynamics of the labour force in South Africa between 2008 and 2010. The focus is on transitions in the labour force, so individuals who had a change in labour-market status and those who were employed over both periods but had a change in type of employment are of particular interest.…”

“…The paper by Lloyd & Leibbrandt (2013) looks at a topic that sits at the interface of the papers by Posel (2013) and Cichello et al (2013) in that it uses the questions on subjective well-being and labour-market status from both waves of the survey to investigate the relationship between being unemployed and subjective well-being. The fact that this issue can be explored in NIDS serves as an important illustration of the many possibilities that there are in NIDs for doing important and innovative work on 10 I Woolard et al…”