Examining the South African labour market during the COVID-19 lockdown period

ABSTRACT

This study analysed the 2020 first quarter to 2022 second quarter waves of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) data and all five waves (2020–21) of the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) data to examine the South African labour market outcomes during the COVID-19 lockdown period. The QLFS data showed that low-educated Africans aged 25–44 years and those involved in low skilled occupation categories were most vulnerable to job loss. The NIDS-CRAM data indicated that for those who still worked in February 2020, 51% worked all five waves, 14% worked in four waves and 9% worked in three waves. Only 0.5% and 1.8% turned out to be unemployed and inactive in all waves, respectively. For the February 2020 employed who lost their jobs and became unemployed in April 2020 (wave 1), 60% of them worked again but 22% remained unemployed in March 2021 (wave 5).

KEYWORDS:

• Labour market
• Coronavirus
• economic lockdown
• South Africa

JEL CODES:

• J00
• J20

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Whilst this study focuses on what happened to the labour market during the lockdown period, Giesecke (2020) asserted that lockdown might only delay severely ill cases for a while but would not prevent them from happening, whereas Herby (2021) found that, on average, mandated behaviour changes during the lockdown period only represented 9% of the total effect on the growth of the virus stemming from behavioural changes, but the remaining 91% of the effect was attributed to voluntary behavioural changes.