Job retention policy – which aims to preserve jobs at firms experiencing a temporary reduction in activity by alleviating labour costs and supporting the incomes of workers – has served as one of the
main tools used by governments across the world to mitigate job losses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the form of wage subsidies. In South Africa, the government’s Temporary
Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS), introduced in April 2020, served as a core component of the country’s economic policy response benefiting millions of vulnerable workers. In this paper,
we provide a detailed, quantitative, descriptive analysis of TERS receipt over time by making use of representative, longitudinal survey data collected over the course of 2020 and 2021: all fives waves of the National Income Dynamics Study: Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM).