Over the course of lockdown, pundits have shared some harrowing statistics regarding the increase in unemployment in South Africa. In general, our unemployment rates are moving in the wrong direction and the affected households have suffered great hardship as a result, but it is important to understand what this means for our tax base and our growing budget deficit. The statistics The University of Cape Town’s (“UCT”) Liberty Institute of Strategic Marketing has used the National Income Dynamics Survey (“NIDS”) to paint a picture of the number of adults living in households by income band (“the survey”). The survey uses six bands of income and compares the figures of 2017 with that of June 2020, per the below diagram: