The SA Reserve Bank (SARB) regularly determines the upper and lower turning points of the South African business cycle, but this is only completed after all the relevant information has been obtained, confirmed and analysed, causing a lengthy time lag between the actual determination and the...

Among the various methods used to identify the business cycle from aggregate data, the Hodrick-Prescott filter has become an industry standard – it ‘identifies’ the business cycle by removing low-frequency information, thereby smoothing the data. Since the filter’s inception in 1980, the...

This paper analyses trends in hours worked from South African household survey data for the period 1997 – 2011. The purpose of the paper is fourfold. First, the paper provides an overview on the trends in hours worked of formal sector employees, by various demographic and work characteristics....