Labour market analysis in the South African context provides a relatively robust understanding of the individual characteristics that influence wage differentials across workers (i.e. supply-side characteristics), but provides relatively little insight into the firm-level characteristics...

This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before entering a period of premature deindustrialization....

Earnings growth in South Africa displayed a U-shaped pattern across the earnings percentiles between 2000 and 2015, resembling wage polarization in the industrialized world. We investigate whether the drivers of this example of wage polarization in an emerging economy resemble those explored for...