Revisiting transitory and chronic unemployment in South Africa
Hayley Innez Wakefield, Derek Yu, Christie Swanepoel
Abstract
This study comprehensively explores the nature and extent of transitory and chronic unemployment using the data from the first four waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) conducted in 2008–15. The empirical findings revealed that the transitorily and chronically unemployed individuals shared highly similar characteristics: African female individuals with incomplete secondary education, residing in urban areas of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces. Both groups of unemployed individuals were more likely to come from the youth cohorts (25–34 and 35–44 years, in particular the former cohort), with their households being composed of about five members on average. Lastly, upon examining all employed individuals at the time of wave 4 of NIDS, those who worked across all four waves earned nearly three times as much as those who experienced unemployment of some duration in the first three waves (R11 300 versus R3800 per month, in 2019 December prices).