IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/deveza/v36y2019i4p461-475.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring regional labour markets in South Africa: How robust are sub-national estimates from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey?

Author

Listed:
  • Justin Visagie

Abstract

This article explores the limitations of using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) to estimate robust sub-national labour market indicators in South Africa. The precision of labour market indices in the QLFS is very sensitive to which geographic scale is examined – national, provincial or metro – and in each instance the size of the population of the province or metro. The results show that errors from sampling at regional and city levels may be prohibitively large although in some instances broad patterns between regions can be identified notwithstanding a fairly blunt instrument. The findings highlight the imperative to be transparent about sampling errors and to foster sensitivity within government, business and the public in general. This exercise is instructive for generating other regional socio-economic indicators that are based upon similar household sample surveys such as the General Household Survey, Living Conditions Survey and Income and Expenditure Survey.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin Visagie, 2019. "Measuring regional labour markets in South Africa: How robust are sub-national estimates from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey?," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(4), pages 461-475, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:36:y:2019:i:4:p:461-475
    DOI: 10.1080/0376835X.2018.1521265
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0376835X.2018.1521265
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0376835X.2018.1521265?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:36:y:2019:i:4:p:461-475. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CDSA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.