South African Skilled Workers Return on Global Economic Weakness

South Africans working in skilled positions abroad have been returning to the country since 2008 as jobs in overseas countries dwindled, while local demand outstrips supply, according to a report by Adcorp Holdings Ltd.

A net 359,000 high-skilled South Africans, or about 18 percent of the total pool of managers and professionals, returned to the country in the last seven years, reversing a “brain drain that left South African companies with a critical shortage of scarce skills,” Loane Sharp, a labor economist at South Africa’s biggest employment agency, said by phone.