Skilled labour emigration in South Africa: Exploring the long-term implications

South Africa has experienced rising numbers of skilled workers emigrating, losing more skilled workers than it receives. Unlike skilled immigrants, emigrants tend to be highly skilled, South African trained, driven by non-monetary factors, and less likely to return. Skilled emigration threatens to undermine efforts to close the country’s chronic skills gap and have far-reaching implications for productivity, growth, income distribution, and structural change.