Job losses resulting from lockdown will be much more likely among workers who cannot work from home and are not in essential services, write Amy Thornton and Andrew Kerr
Job losses resulting from lockdown will be much more likely among workers who cannot work from home and are not in essential servicesMen looking for piece jobs in Meredale, Johannesburg. Picture: KATHERINE MUICK
Unfortunately, Statistics SA has had to stop in-person fieldwork, and has also stopped the quarterly employment statistics firm survey, so actual job losses will be difficult to estimate until these surveys resume.
Some jobs may feasibly be done at home in the US, but not in SA. Teachers, for example, are classified as able to work from home by Dingel and Neiman, but in SA most primary and secondary teachers cannot work from home for reasons of access to internet on the parts of both teachers and students. We therefore adjust the Dingel and Neiman classification based on our own judgment for SA’s context.
We estimate that 13.8% of the employed in SA could feasibly work at home, or just over two-million people. Those whose work involves tasks that could be done at home are all in more highly skilled occupations. We estimate that 65% of senior managers and 56% of professionals could work from home. But no workers in low skilled occupations could work from home, since their jobs involve tasks that require them to be at their workplace . Sixty-three percent of workers, or 10.
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