IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v58y2022i10p2065-2088.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identifying the Wage Differential in the Temporary Employment Services Sector: Evidence for South Africa using Administrative Tax Records

Author

Listed:
  • Aalia Cassim
  • Daniela Casale

Abstract

Although the temporary employment services (TES) or labour broker sector has been growing in recent decades, and there has been much heated public debate on whether the jobs offered constitute ‘decent work’, there has been little empirical research on this sector in developing countries. In this paper, we use a unique administrative panel dataset based on income tax records for the period 2011–2015 in South Africa, to explore the wage and benefits differentials between TES and non-TES workers. We find a substantial gross wage differential of around 88 per cent, which remains high at 34 per cent even after accounting for worker fixed effects and controlling for the individual and job characteristics available in the data. We also show that TES workers are much less likely to report benefit contributions than non-TES workers, and when they do, their contributions as a percentage of the gross wage are on average much lower than among non-TES workers. These results add substance to the arguments that TES workers are in a more precarious position than non-TES workers, and that this form of employment contributes to high levels of labour market inequality in South Africa.

Suggested Citation

  • Aalia Cassim & Daniela Casale, 2022. "Identifying the Wage Differential in the Temporary Employment Services Sector: Evidence for South Africa using Administrative Tax Records," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(10), pages 2065-2088, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:58:y:2022:i:10:p:2065-2088
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2022.2094252
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2022.2094252
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2022.2094252?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:jdevst:v:58:y:2022:i:10:p:2065-2088. 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/FJDS20 .

    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.