SA job crisis deepens

·30 Sep 2015

South Africa lost over 160,000 jobs in the past year, led by a massive drain in the community services industry, amid tough economic conditions in the country.

This is according to the Quarterly Employment Statistics from Stats SA, which tracks data from March 2015 to June 2015, as well as year-on-year from June 2014.

In the last quarter, there was a net loss of 1,000 jobs in the country. This was due to decreases in the following industries:

Manufacturing industry: -7,000
Transport industry: -4,000
Business services industry: -3,000
Construction industry: -2,000

The job losses were somewhat offset by job increases in these industries:

Trade industry: +8,000
Community services industry: +7,000

The mining and quarrying industry and electricity industry remained unchanged, StatsSA said.

Comparing year-on-year data, South Africa now has 161,000 fewer employed people in the formal, non-agricultural sector.

This represents just over 80% of total formal employment and 60% of total jobs in SA.

The community services industry, which employs over 2.5 million people, was the biggest casualty, having shed over 141,000 jobs in the last year.

As at June 2015, 8.945 million people were employed in the sector, versus 8.944 million in 2014.

SA job crisis

The stats paint a dismal picture for South African employment, as the formal sector is one of the largest job markets in the country.

This means that massive job losses are a sign that the country’s stubbornly high unemployment rate is likely to persist.

South Africa has an unemployment rate above 25% by the narrow definition of unemployment – shooting up to about 34% when taking the broad definition into account.

Worse still, more than 50% of working-age youth (between 15-24 years) are unemployed.

According to FNB economists Jason Muscat and Alex Smith, the lack of formal sector job gains will likely keep the labour market under significant pressure over the medium term.