Employment depends on lockdown levels and has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, remaining at approximately 10% below pre-pandemic levels for South Africa as a whole.
This shows that lockdown restrictions can affect the economy in such a tremendously negative way that it is difficult to recover in the course of a year.
This is part of the conclusion of a study, Labour Market Dynamics in the Era of Covid-19: What we’ve learnt from NIDSCRAM and the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys (QLFS), conducted by Reza Daniels, Kim Ingle and Tim Brophy from the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. The study was done before the third wave of the pandemic.
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The National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) is a national panel survey of South African individuals who are contacted regularly to answer questions about their income and employment, household welfare, receipt of grants and knowledge and behaviour of Covid-19.
In the NIDS-CRAM survey it was clear that levels of employment where workers were retrenched fluctuated directly in response to lockdown levels. Every time the regulations became stricter, more workers were retrenched.
Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that wherever possible, the government should do everything possible to geographically differentiate lockdown levels to minimise their national impact and maximise the potential for localised economic recoveries.
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The key findings include:
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