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Has “the brain drain” been reversed?
According to BDLive, South Africa’s ‘brain drain’ problems have been reversed over the past few years thanks in part to weak economies elsewhere - a continuing trend that bodes well for local business, says Adcorp labour market economist Loane Sharp.
An Adcorp employment report released on Monday shows that since the global financial crisis began in 2008, 359 000 high-skilled South Africans have returned from foreign work assignments, reports the news portal.
"South Africans who emigrated 10 years ago during the worldwide economic boom, from 2004 to 2008, overestimated their job security in English-speaking countries — the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on," said Sharp.
"When the global financial crisis hit, I think they discovered just how vulnerable their jobs were. That’s what we’re seeing through our recruitment databases — a significant uptick in the number of South Africans returning from abroad and looking for work here."
Sharp also said that those who were returning had found work, and the unemployment rate for high-skilled workers was as low as 0.4%.
"South Africa has a tremendous shortage of high-skilled workers and, as a result, South African companies struggle to find appropriately skilled people and they pay generally much higher than they would abroad,” concluded Sharp.
