The employment problem in SA has become a major focus of government action. Employment in the formal sector, that is with employers who provide medical and pension benefits and collect PAYE , has lagged well behind GDP growth since the mid 1990s.
Furthermore real remuneration per worker since then has increased significantly over the same period. The two figures below, provided by Adcorp, tell the full story of much better jobs for far fewer workers. The SA economy, or at least the formal part of it, has become much less labour intensive, and much more capital and skilled labour intensive. Decent jobs, but only for the fortunate few, is the SA reality.
The less fortunate or less well endowed with skills get by finding work outside the recorded regulated sector and depend increasingly on welfare grants. Immigrants, of whose large numbers we are uninformed about, without cash grants support from the SA government (i.e. the taxpayer) seem to find work easily enough, though no doubt at highly competitive wages.
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Continue reading Employment: A call for economic realism, not wishful thinking