How serious is unemployment really in South Africa? If countries with relatively low unemployment were to use a ‘broad’ or expanded definition which includes the non-searching unemployed, the rate of unemployment would typically increase by at most a percentage point or two. In South Africa, however, this is not the case. The unemployment rate would be significantly higher if the non-searching unemployed were included. This is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows how the inclusion of the non-searching unemployed raises the unemployment rate by an average of approximately ten percentage points. The question of which definition is appropriate to use in analysis and policy responses is no small matter: for example, in 2004, when the gap between the two definitions was largest, the non-searching unemployed (4.1 million) almost equalled the number of searching unemployed (4.2 million people).#TMStaff
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 12:00:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015