HOME & LIVING
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ost households are less worried about their homes and its condition and they spend more money on their looks and enjoying the good life. According to the Household Consumer for Household Services, two of the most rapid long term growth areas in real consumption expenditure have been ‘Clothing and Footwear’ and ‘Recreation, Entertainment and Culture’.
says the economy has not been firing on all cylinders in recent years. Recently, the Institute of Race Relations published statistics on the estimates of the number of people employed as domestic workers annually in South Africa since 2001.
It is estimated that, there were 1.288 million domestic workers employed in 2006, following a few great economic years which had arguably led to an increase in this number from 1.188 million in 2001. The number had FNB Household and Consumer Strategist, dropped to 1.153 million by 2012. John Loos says there is a degree of short term cyclicality to household consumer In a country where less skilled demand for household services, which sections of the labour force face high includes domestic workers along with a unemployment rates, these figures broader spectrum of home maintenance should perhaps be a concern, given that this sector has traditionally been a and upkeep-related services. He also 38
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sizeable provider of employment to low skilled labour. Loos says the Real Household Expenditure on Household Services has grown in the long term, buoyed by a growing number of households. However, he says the growth has been “sub-par”, below overall real long term household consumption expenditure growth, because the average household depends less on household and domestic worker services, and they allocates a larger share of income to other ‘essential’ items. “Already from the late 1950s, we have seen a long term decline in the percentage of homes that have been built with domestic workers’ quarters — an early sign of diminishing dependence on domestic workers as the live-in worker started losing appeal for some.”
