The role of gender and race in lifetime tenure Source: authors’ calculations using the SARS IRP5 Panel between 2010–17. The hazard peaked at about six months in the US in the mid-1990s. This captures intuitive ideas about how returns to gaining on-the-job know-how and skills for both employers and employees reinforce the chance a job will continue to exist. For example, a job that has lasted four years (1,460 days) has a much lower chance of ending than one that has lasted eight months.
Jobs that have lasted about eight months are then most likely to end, but jobs that last longer are much less likely to end. The hazard function first increases and then steeply declines, peaking at about eight months. The hazard function on the other hand measures the chance a job will end, given that it has already lasted a given amount of time. This rate is about the same as in the US in the mid-1990s, but shorter than in Germany during the same period. The survivor function is the chance a job will last a given amount of time and shows that half of jobs end within a year. Job duration in South Africa: similar characteristics to the developed worldįigures 1 and 2 describe estimates of the job survivor and hazard functions using South African tax data for the period 2010–17. However, without an understanding of the distortions caused by apartheid-era labour market and segregationist policies, results from that era could be misinterpreted. The analysis indicates similarities between job spells in South Africa and those in the Global North: most new jobs end early, the job duration hazard declines with tenure, and lifetime tenure is common.
Two recently publicly-released datasets make it possible to study job spells in the South African context for the first time, and to analyse the duration of jobs both during and after apartheid. The median length of current tenure lengthened over the post-apartheid as unemployment worsened, suggesting slacker hiring rates and a decline in the mobility of employees after the global financial crisis in 2007–08. In post-apartheid South Africa, half of new jobs survive for less than a year, which is about the same as in the United States in the mid-1990s, but shorter than in Germany during the same periodĭuring apartheid long-term tenure did not necessarily signal labour market advantage for Black populations who were the target of segregationist policies at the time The main features of job duration in South Africa are similar to those in the developed world in that most new jobs end early, the hazard declines with tenure, and ‘lifetime’ tenure -tenure of 20 years or more - is common
New data makes this analysis possible for South Africa There has been little research so far comparing job duration in the Global South with that in the Global North.
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