ABSTRACT
This chapter describes importance of analyzing labour market and education trends. In a very caricatured fashion, manpower planning involves projecting on the growth of labour demand by different occupations and then supplanting the trends on the institutions of supply. The generic point though is that while positive employment growth was reported for all race groups relative to the growing labour force, all races yielded poor or inadequate labour demand growth. Race therefore continues to be an important marker in the South African labour market. The collection of data points to a number of important conclusions about the linkages between human capital acquisition and the labour market. Earnings function models have for long dominated much of the empirical research in economics in trying to link education to labour market outcomes. Quality of the degree, the cognitive skills of the individual, their attributes and ability together help shape the nature of human capital that they would be offering in the labour market.
