SETP No. 14 The Economic Value of Incremental Employment in the ...

3.23 There are four possible reasons for these results:
• A small sample. The number of respondents for each category were:
bricklayers – 214, concrete workers – 17, carpenters – 91, labour – 241,
and semi-skilled labour – 86.
• A wide scatter in the data. This is evidenced by the very high standard
deviations that are probably caused by the small sample of skilled
workers.
• Wages in the civil engineering industry being higher than house
construction such that civil engineering labour does earn more house
construction bricklayers.
• The falling real wage for whites and coloureds is presumed to have a
disproportional impact on skilled labour, contributing to extra deviations in
the sample
The 1996 Census
3.24 The recent general availability of the 1996 census allowed for a more reliable
estimate of average wages by occupation type. Because of the very large
sample – 40 million in theory but 13 million in the ‘labour’ portion of the
community profile – we expect to capture a more accurate measure of salaries
by occupation.
3.25 For the purposes of this investigation, the occupation categories of relevance are
the five shown in Table 3.9 below – professionals, technicians and associated
professionals, craft and related workers, plant and machine operators and
assemblers, and elementary occupations. Of these categories ‘craft and related
workers’ is made up of categories 7122 (bricklayers), 7123 (concrete workers)
and 7124 (carpenters) while ‘elementary occupations’ consists of 9312
(construction labour) and 9312 (semi-skilled labour). The term ‘elementary
occupations’ is used in the population census and is not a creation of this writer.
National Estimates
3.26 In Table 3.9 we show the full country results of an examination of the
occupational structure of the construction industry and average salaries. The first
column of the table indicates the number of workers by occupation in the census
sample. In theory this sample should represent the occupation profile of the
industry. Some concern is expressed at the large number of ‘craft and related
workers’ relative to ‘elementary occupations’. The first impression is that this is
counter intuitive – construction labourers may have responded to the census
questionnaire that they are, for example, bricklayers. This kind of response is a
common problem with questionnaires. On the other hand Statistics SA has
worked hard to avoid these kind of problems and it may be that the civil
engineering part of the construction industry causes these results but that the
results are correct in themselves.
3.27 Therefore treating the results with due caution, we are able to report that in 1996
the construction industry was made up of 486,000 workers. Of this 3% are
professionals, 4% are technicians, 73% are craft workers, 4% are machine
operators and 17% are in elementary occupations.
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