should constantly think of ourselves as citizens of the global village. the strength of the united states economy and trends in financial markets in new york, london, tokyo and elsewhere will be significant factors in influencing whether or not south africa realises its economic potential. but we must not underestimate our own responsibility as south africans to develop our own potential and to run our economy responsibly and efficiently. as citizens of the global village, we must continue to participate actively in the debate on improving the international financial architecture in the hope that a way can be found to minimise the intensity of financial shocks to emerging and developed markets alike. after a long, stimulating and challenging year which i have spent navigating the transition from cabinet minister to central banker and getting to know my colleagues in south africa and other parts of the world, i am looking forward to starting officially next week with enthusiasm and confidence, inspired in no small part by many of you present here tonight. we are fortunate that the south african reserve bank is staffed by well qualified, committed and loyal people. to the president, the members of the board of directors of the bank, my colleagues the deputy governors, management and staff, and esteemed guests : sweswi hi ngene eka nkari wa mahlambandlopfu ( we are now entering the time of the day when the elephants go washing ; that is, the crack of dawn ).

than widen further. we ’ ve already seen some signs of that across sectors, with “ social consumption ” recovering faster than areas of spending since the economy re - opened ( chart 14 again ). in the meantime, the reallocation of jobs, which should also reduce these strains, is likely to continue and may even pick up for a while. however, i ’ m more uncertain about this process, and the implication for costs in aggregate, than about the transitory nature of goods - price inflation. some shifts in demand may stick ( if significant numbers of people continue to work from home, for example ). some re - allocations of supply may be harder than others. if the lasting shifts in demand are towards sectors and activities that need more digital skills, for example, the corresponding increase in labour supply would take time and expense. we can ’ t all become it experts overnight. nor could one easily dismantle an office or restaurant in a city centre and transplant it elsewhere. i exaggerate, of course. market economies face re - allocative shocks all the time and can very often absorb them without any visible effect at the macro - economic level. but this shock has been bigger than most. and the dmp was only set up in 2016. chart 21 extends this backwards using annual company accounts. excess reallocation is calculated as the sum across firms of the absolute value of changes in employment or sales, less net change in employment / sales, expressed as a percentage of total employment / sales. the historical data from annual company accounts are calculated based on changes in employment / sales over the previous three years. the dmp data are based on realised employment / sales growth over the last two years plus expected growth over the next year. annual excess reallocation data from the dmp are averages of monthly data. sales and employment growth are calculated using davis, haltiwanger and schuh ( dhs ) growth rates. this is the change between two periods, divided by the average of those two periods. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice what matters is not so much whether any necessary re - allocations do eventually happen but what extra cost they require and whether that cost has already been incurred and passed on to consumers. i don ’ t think we yet know the answers to those questions. one important place to look will be wage growth. that ’ s