Unemployment in South Africa has continued to be consistently high as indicated by the
various reports published by Statistics South Africa. Unemployment is a global problem
where in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries it is
related to economic condition. The economic conditions are not solely responsible for the
problem of unemployment in South Africa. Consistently high unemployment rates are
observed irrespective of the level of economic growth, where unemployment responds
marginally to changes Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To understand factors that influence
unemployment in South Africa, we need to understand the dynamics of the unemployed
population. This study aims at providing a statistical tool useful in improving the
understanding of the labour market and enhancing of the labour market policy relevancy.
Survival techniques are applied to determine duration dependence, probabilities of exiting
unemployment, and the association between socio-demographic factors and unemployment
duration. A labour force panel data from Statistic South Africa is used to analyse the time it
takes an unemployed person to find employment. The dataset has 4.9 million people who
were unemployed during the third quarter of 2013. The data is analysed by computing nonparametric
and semi-parametric estimates to avoid making assumption about the functional
form of the hazard.