Unemployment remains high despite GDP growth.
The Department of Employment and Labour says despite signs of South Africa’s economy starting to claw its way out of a significant and sustained decline, unemployment figures are still in a slump.
Statistics SA says South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by an estimated 13.5 percent in the third quarter, giving an annualised growth rate of 66.1 percent.
However, the country is still in a precarious position, the department’s director-general, Thobile Lamati, said.
The department says the results in the third quarter of 2020 appear to suggest that the increase in the GDP translates into increased employment, but it does not indicate that South Africa is out of the woods, with the persistently high number of unemployed people in the country.
Despite signs of economic growth, labour absorption rates increased by just 1.2 percentage points, from 36.6 percent in the second quarter to 37.5 percent in the fourth quarter of this year.
Unemployment levels rose to 6.5 million in the third quarter of the year, an increase of more than 2.2 million (52.1 percent), when compared to the second quarter.
Thobile explained that the increase in unemployment levels resulted in an increase of 2.8 million (15.1 percent) workers in the labour force, both employed and unemployed, in September 2020. This was due to an increased amount of reported economically inactive people.
Unemployment rates now stand at 43.1 percent.
“The number of employed persons increased by 543 000 to 14.7 million in the third quarter of 2020, compared to 14.1 million in the second quarter of 2020. The data have shown that all sectors reported employment gains, with the largest in the formal sector (non-agricultural), with 44 percent and the least being in the agriculture sector, with 1.6 percent in the third quarter of 2020. However, this comes with the caution that employment is still well below employment loses reflected during quarter two [under] lockdown restrictions,” Lamati said.
New jobs were recorded in all nine provinces, the largest being in Limpopo, with an uptick of 116 000. The lowest increase was in the Northern Cape, with 31 000 additional employees recorded.
The utilities industry recorded 23 000 job losses, and the transport sector 7 000.
Between the second and third quarters of 2020, the finance sector gained 200 000 employees, 137 000 more workers were recorded in the community and social services industry, and in private households, 116 000 more employees were confirmed.
