Bell, Trevor : Unemployment in South Africa

Simkins. His work is noteworthy partly because of its thoroughness and
technical sophistication, but also because it has been the chief focus of
criticism in the unemployment debate. He has published several sets of
estimates of the unemployment rate in South Africa, and the most recent of
these, revised in the light of new evidence1', are presented in Table
2. The table and figure indicate that after rising in the early sixties
the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in 1967. Thereafter the
unemployment rate rose sharply in 1968. However, it declined somewhat
thereafter, and though rising to 18.9 per cent in 1972, was reduced by the
gold boom of 1973-75 to a level of only 16.2 per cent, that is only just
slightly higher than in 1967. It is, therefore, not clear that a secular
upward trend in the unemployment rate can be said to have set in by that
stage. However, the boom of 1973-75 was due to an unprecedented shock
originating abroad (the oil crisis, through its effect on the price of
gold), which may well have merely temporarily prevented the manifestation
of an underlying longer-term tendency for unemployment rates to rise.
For, at the end of this phase of strong cyclical expansion the overall
unemployment rate rises strongly to 21.1 per cent in 1979, remains at
about that level till 1981, but thereafter rises again in 1982 to a level
higher than any previously reached. This resumption of the rising trend
doubtless continues at least some way into 1983, as the current recession
deepens. Whether we see it as cyclical or secular therefore, we find that
the overall unemployment rate according to the general method used by
Simkins (1982 : 6). taking into account the recent adjustments referred to
above, has increased from 16.2 per cent in 1975 to about 22 per cent in
1982, and probably to a yet higher level in 1983.
1) These revised results are unpublished and have been kindly provided
to me in correspondence and in conversation. I am most grateful to
Charles Simkins for this, but he naturally bears no responsibility
for any errors which may be made here in adjusting his last published
estimates or in interpreting the evidence.