Public health implications of changing patterns of recruitment into the South African mining industry, 1973–2012: a database analysis

Table 3 Proportions (%) of miners^a in employment by 5-year period and demographic and occupational characteristics, 1973–2012

	1973–1977	1978–1982	1983–1987	1988–1992	1993–1997	1998–2002	2003–2007	2008–2012
Total	173,260	292,772	840,736	873,531	783,842	500,252	524,646	569,813
Country of origin
South Africa	46.34	57.29	66	67.99	67.55	58.22	67.95	75.45
Other SADC	53.66	42.71	34	32.01	32.45	41.78	32.05	24.52
Racial ascription
Black	96.85	95.83	97.17	93.65	91.01	90.5	91.04	90.72
White	3.09	4.11	2.77	6.22	8.8	9.14	8.44	8.58
Other categories	0.05	0.07	0.04	0.13	0.18	0.36	0.53	0.61
Gender
Male	99.82	99.67	99.69	99.03	98.36	98.31	96.33	93.49
Female	0.18	0.33	0.31	0.97	1.64	1.69	3.67	6.51
Commodity^b
Gold	91.65	90.22	86.24	80.95	78.27	74.27	60.4	52.51
Platinum	6.45	7.75	11.2	11.47	11.42	14.61	25.28	32.32
Coal	0.77	0.92	1.04	4.22	4.23	3.07	2.96	2.37
Other	0.80	0.71	0.76	1.59	2.51	2.24	2.87	3.70
Unknown	0.33	0.39	0.77	1.77	3.57	5.8	8.5	9.11
Occupational risk category^b
Surface non-risk	8.31	9.76	16.99	10.59	9.09	12.89	11.45	9.02
Surface risk	0	0.01	0.01	0.02	0.06	0.29	2.15	8.6
Underground	91.69	90.23	82.99	89.39	90.85	86.82	86.4	82.38
Employment status
Mine employee only	91.86	91.36	91.91	88.5	80.89	64.2	49.96	42.68
Ever contractor	8.14	8.64	8.09	11.5	19.11	35.8	50.04	57.32

^aAn individual miner cannot be counted more than once in a given period, but may be counted in more than one period
^bCategory where the longest service was accumulated over a full career if miner worked in more than one category

ISSN: 1471-2458