Rising Unemployment in a Growing Economy: A Business Cycle, Generational and Life Cycle Perspective of Post-Transition South Africa’s Labour Market

Rulof Burger and Dieter von Fintel

Studies in Economics and Econometrics, 2014, vol. 38, issue 1, 35-64

Abstract: This paper performs age-period-cohort decompositions of post-apartheid South African labour market outcomes in a period where unemployment worryingly rose, despite robust economic growth. We disentangle short-term from long-run factors, concluding that the first post-transition decade led to higher equilibrium unemployment. Claims of jobless growth over the business cycle are invalidated, with unemployment following a counter-cyclical pattern. Rather, generational components highlight long-run wage rigidities, decreases in labour demand within poorly educated groups and a gradual increase in participation amongst the most recent birth cohorts, reflecting higher education levels and changes in household formation. A disproportionate surge in entry amongst the very youngest (who were affected by post-transition education reforms) explains why unemployment rose in spite of an economic upswing in this period, and raises the concern of labour market scarring for this group.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10800379.2014.12097262 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:rseexx:v:38:y:2014:i:1:p:35-64

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsee20

DOI: 10.1080/10800379.2014.12097262

Access Statistics for this article

Studies in Economics and Econometrics is currently edited by Willem Bester

More articles in Studies in Economics and Econometrics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().