This paper conducts an analysis of labour market dynamics in South Africa during the initial period of lockdown, from the end of March to the end of April 2020, using the first wave of the NIDS‐CRAM (2020) survey. Within our sample of over 6,000 adults aged 18 to 59, we found that there was a very large decrease in employment. The fraction of the sample that was conventionally classified as employed decreased from 57% in February to 48% in April. If we further exclude temporarily absent workers, which we term “furloughed” employees, this fraction decreases further to 38%. Thus, about one out of every three employed people in our sample either lost their job or did not work and received no wages during April. This has extremely large implications for poverty and welfare. We further analyse the labour market by comparing across demographic groups as defined by race, by gender, by age groups, by geographic areas and by education levels. The over‐arching finding from this analysis is that the job losses were not uniformly distributed amongst the different groups. In particular, groups who have always been more vulnerable – such as women, African/Blacks, youth and less educated groups – have been disproportionately negatively affected.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19大流行开始时南非的劳动力市场动态

本文使用NIDS-CRAM（2020）调查的第一波对锁定期初期（从3月底到2020年4月底）南非劳动力市场动态进行了分析。在我们的6,000多名18至59岁的成年人样本中，我们发现就业人数下降了很多。按常规分类为使用样本的比例从2月份的57％下降到4月份的48％。如果我们进一步排除暂时缺勤的工人（我们称其为“失业人员”），则这一比例将进一步降低至38％。因此，在我们的样本中，大约三分之二的就业者在四月份失去了工作或没有工作并且没有工资。这对贫困和福利具有极大的影响。我们通过比较按种族，性别，年龄组，地理区域和教育水平定义的不同人口组，进一步分析了劳动力市场。从该分析得出的总体结论是，失业人数在不同群体之间分布不均。特别是，一直以来最脆弱的群体，例如妇女，非洲裔/黑人，青年和文化程度较低的群体，受到的负面影响尤其严重。