In order to devise effective policies for addressing unemployment,
it is essential to understand the characteristics of
the unemployed. In work done for the South African
Poverty and Inequality Report, Klasen and Woolard1 argue
that it would be useful to distinguish between six
categories of the unemployed, namely the poorly educated
rural unemployed; the poorly educated urban unemployed;
the young unemployed; the long-term unemployed with no
labour market experience; the educated unemployed with
labour market experience; and the highly educated
unemployed. They hypothesise that certain of these
groups will be absorbed into the labour market more easily
than others. For example, they suggest that the long-term
unemployed will find it especially difficult to break into the
job market, and that the highly educated are likely to be the
most easily absorbed.
This article sets out to investigate whether this categorisation
is sufficiently nuanced to assist with policy
formulation. The article makes use of panel data for
KwaZulu-Natal to investigate the labour market outcomes
in 1998 and 2004 of the same individuals that were
surveyed in 1993. By observing the same individuals at
three points in time, it is possible to see which groups of
unemployed individuals have been more likely to make the
transition into paid employment. Similarly, it is possible to
identify which groups are most likely to have dropped out
of the labour force altogether.