LMIP Working Paper: No. 5
Andrew Kerr, University of Cape Town
The aim of this paper is to clarify what is meant by labour demand in the Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) Labour Market Intelligence Partnership (LMIP) project, to highlight the sources of data that can be used to understand labour demand and that are available to the LMIP and to make a distinction between analysing and forecasting labour demand. It is this author’s assessment that there may be very different notions of what some of the key concepts actually mean, so in the first section of the paper I clarify what is meant by labour supply and demand. The LMIP is concerned with establishing the foundation for labour market information systems (LMIS) in South Africa in which data on labour demand is indispensable, including the development of a system for forecasting the supply of and demand for skills. Thus a brief history of manpower forecasting analysis (MFA) and its evolution into labour market analysis is given, exploring the different emphases of these approaches and how each of these might contribute to understanding labour market demand over time. What survey data can be used for in the analysis of labour demand is then examined, before exploring possible sources of data on the South African labour market and how the value of these data can be improved. Finally, some suggestions on sources of administrative data that could also be used by the DHET for analysis of the labour market, and of labour demand, are made.
