Employment uncertainty in the era of COVID-19: Evidence from NIDS-CRAM and the QLFS

Reza Daniels, Kim Ingle and Tim Brophy
Additional contact information
Kim Ingle: Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU), UCT
Tim Brophy: Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU), UCT

No 282, SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town

Abstract: This paper conducts an analysis of employment uncertainty and trends in South Africa during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, using NIDS-CRAM and five waves of Statistics SA's Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS: 2020-Q1 to 2021-Q1). We find that much of the differences in estimates of labour force states including employment, unemployment and not economically active, are due to different initial conditions and different reference periods between the two surveys, as well as the way that uncertain job attachment is measured in the questionnaires. This leads to higher estimates of employment in NIDS-CRAM compared to the QLFS for both a pre-pandemic baseline and over the entire period investigated (February 2020 to March 2021). This implies the two data sources are not strictly comparable, but rather complimentary when analysing different aspects of the labour force. We discuss the implications for labour market research based on these data sources.

Keywords: Labour market statistics; questionnaire design; labour force status determination; COVID-19 lockdowns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J23 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/handle/11090/1010 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Employment uncertainty in the era of COVID-19: Evidence from NIDS-CRAM and the QLFS (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ldr:wpaper:282

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alison Siljeur ().