IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctw/wpaper/07120.html

Unemployment, Education and Skills Constraints in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Rosa Dias
  • Dorrit Posel

    (Division of Economics,University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between education and unemployment in Post-Apartheid South Africa, and probes the argument that employment growth has been inhibited particularly by skills constraints. We use probit regression analysis to show that higher education protected against unemployment in both 1995 and 2003, and that overall, the relative benefits to tertiary education rose over the period. We show also that these aggregate trends mask substantial variation among race groups and within race groups, among men and women. However, after taking into account changes in the survey instruments used to measure employment, we find only modest evidence of skills-intensive employment growth. Rather, the increase in formally qualified labour was considerably larger than the increase in demand for skilled and semi-skilled labour over the period, and so unemployment rates even among graduates increased over the period.

Suggested Citation

  • Rosa Dias & Dorrit Posel, 2007. "Unemployment, Education and Skills Constraints in Post-Apartheid South Africa," Working Papers 07120, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    • Handle: RePEc:ctw:wpaper:07120
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7262
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Cichello & Gary Fields & Murray Leibbrandt, 2003. "Earnings and Employment Dynamics for Africans in Post-apartheid South Africa: A Panel Study of KwaZulu-Natal," Working Papers 03077, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    2. T. Paul Schultz & Germano Mwabu, 1998. "Labor Unions and the Distribution of Wages and Employment in South Africa," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 51(4), pages 680-703, July.
    3. Murray Leibbrandt & Haroon Bhorat, 1999. "Correlates of Vulnerability in the South African Labour Market," Working Papers 99027, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Siv Gustafsson & Adriaan Kalwij & Seble Worku, 2009. "Educational Attainment Differences Between Population Groups In South Africa And The Timing And Number Of Births," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 77(4), pages 471-487, December.
    2. Maciej Szelewicki & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2009. "Labour Market Racial Discrimination in South Africa Revisited," Working Papers 2009-08, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    3. Kishan Shah & Federico Sturzenegger, 2023. "Search, Transport Costs, and Labor Markets in South Africa," CID Working Papers 142a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Murray Leibbrandt & Haroon Bhorat, 1999. "Modelling Vulnerability and Low Earnings in the South African Labour Market," Working Papers 99032, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    2. Haroon Bhorat & Sumayya Goga & Carlene Van Der Westhuizen, 2012. "Institutional Wage Effects: Revisiting Union And Bargaining Council Wage Premia In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 80(3), pages 400-414, September.
    3. Mich Brookes & Timothy Hinks, 2004. "The Racial Employment Gap In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 72(3), pages 573-580, September.
    4. Andrew Kerr & Martin Wittenberg & Jairo Arrow, 2014. "Job Creation and Destruction in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 82(1), pages 1-18, March.
    5. Freeman, Richard B., 2010. "Labor Regulations, Unions, and Social Protection in Developing Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4657-4702, Elsevier.
    6. Paul Cichello & Hala Abou-Ali & Daniela Marotta, 2013. "What happened to real earnings in Egypt, 2008 to 2009?," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-38, December.
    7. Evenson, Robert E. & Mwabu, Germano, 1998. "The Effects of Agricultural Extension on Farm Yields in Kenya," Center Discussion Papers 28509, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    8. R C Daniels & S Rospabe, 2005. "Estimating an Earnings Function From Coarsened Data by an Interval Censored Regression Procedure," Studies in Economics and Econometrics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 29-46, April.
    9. Mohamed Jellal & François-Charles Wolff, 2003. "Privatisation et négociation collective," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 11(1), pages 73-99.
    10. Essers, Dennis, 2013. "South African labour market transitions during the global financial and economic crisis: Micro-level evidence from the NIDS panel and matched QLFS cross-sections," IOB Working Papers 2013.12, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    11. Ija Trapeznikova & Juan Pablo Rud, 2015. "Wage Dispersion, Job Creation and Development: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," 2015 Meeting Papers 1005, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Miracle Ntuli & Prudence Kwenda, 2013. "Labour Unions and Wage Inequality Among African Men in South Africa," Working Papers 13159, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    13. Robert E. Evenson & Germano Mwabu, 1998. "The Effects of Agricultural Extension on Farm Yields in Kenya," Working Papers 798, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    14. David Fairris, 2003. "Unions and Wage Inequality in Mexico," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(3), pages 481-497, April.
    15. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon & John Knight, 2006. "How Flexible are Wages in Response to Local Unemployment in South Africa?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 59(3), pages 471-495, April.
    16. Haroon Bhorat, 2000. "Wage premia and wage differentials in the South African labour market," Working Papers 00043, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    17. Evangelos M. Falaris, 2008. "A Quantile Regression Analysis of Wages in Panama," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(3), pages 498-514, August.
    18. Olivier Bargain & Prudence Kwenda, 2014. "The Informal Sector Wage Gap: New Evidence Using Quantile Estimations on Panel Data," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 117-153.
    19. Abhijit Banerjee & Sebastian Galiani & Jim Levinsohn & Zoë McLaren & Ingrid Woolard, 2008. "Why has unemployment risen in the New South Africa?1," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 16(4), pages 715-740, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics

    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:ctw:wpaper:07120. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Waseema Petersen The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Waseema Petersen to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpuctza.html .

    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.