{"id":504299,"date":"2021-07-08T11:36:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T09:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=504299"},"modified":"2021-07-08T11:36:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T09:36:18","slug":"south-africas-jobs-market-is-slowly-recovering-but-theres-a-hidden-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/504299\/south-africas-jobs-market-is-slowly-recovering-but-theres-a-hidden-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s jobs market is slowly recovering – but there’s a hidden problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s March 2021 employment levels were similar to February 2020 after a partial employment recovery in adjusted lockdown level 1 – but the official statistics don’t tell the full story, data from the latest National Income Dynamics Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) survey shows.<\/p>\n

The NIDS-CRAM is a study conducted by a national consortium of 30 social science researchers from local universities, and groups including the Human Sciences Research Council and Department of Education.<\/p>\n

The data shows that the employment to population ratio (EPOP) for 18-64-year-olds, excluding those workers who were furloughed, shows a return to levels close to the pre-pandemic February 2020 baseline.<\/p>\n

This recovery mimics October 2020\u2019s partial recovery and shows the immediate impact of lockdown levels on employment.<\/p>\n

While this is positive news, there is still significant churn in the labour market<\/strong>, the researchers said – new jobs might have been created over the period, but they are not necessarily employing the same people who lost their jobs during lockdown.<\/p>\n

Approximately 23% of people employed in February 2020 were no longer employed a year later<\/strong>, while 30% of those without employment in February 2020 found employment by March 2021.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The recovery has also been uneven by gender – women\u2019s employment in March 2021 remains 8% lower than pre-pandemic levels, while employment among men appears to have fully recovered.<\/p>\n

Among the employed, hours worked per week for women was down 6% on average in March 2021 (or 2 hours per week) compared to February 2020, while for men this had returned to pre-Covid levels.<\/p>\n

Youth (18-24) experienced the largest employment increase between February 2020 and March 2021 (33% to 35%).<\/p>\n

Older adults (55-64) experienced the largest decrease in the Employment to Population ratio (EPOP) from 45% to 41%.<\/p>\n

Between April 2020 and March 2021, there were decreases in the share of discouraged work-seekers across age groups and simultaneous increases in labour force participation for all groups except for older adults.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Here are the work from home rules under South Africa\u2019s level 4 lockdown<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s March 2021 employment levels were similar to February 2020 after a partial employment recovery in adjusted lockdown level 1-\u00a0 but the official statistics don’t tell the full story data from the latest National Income Dynamics Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) survey shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":254195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,15786],"class_list":["post-504299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-nids-cram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504299"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504365,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504299\/revisions\/504365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}