The negligible rise in the country’s employment rate is “a cause for great concern”, Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said on Wednesday.
Reacting to the labour-force survey data released by Statistics South Africa on Tuesday, he said the fact that 658Â 000 jobs were created during the year ended September 2005 is encouraging.
However, the official unemployment rate rose slightly to 26,7% from 26,2% in September 2004 as the labour force grew faster than job opportunities.
Using an expanded definition that includes discouraged job seekers, the unemployment rate eased to 38,8% in September 2005 from 40,5% in March 2005.
Discouraged job seekers are people who have not looked for work over a four-week period prior to the survey.
South Africa’s employment in the formal sector is 7,9-million, or 64,9% of total employment; informal-sector employment is 2,4-million, or 20%; domestic work accounts for 0,9-million jobs, or 7%; and the number is one million in agriculture and unspecified, or 7,5%. The informal sector includes hawkers.
Mdladlana’s spokesperson Mokgadi Pela said the government — with its partners at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) — hopes to accelerate the job-creation rate in a bid to alleviate economic hardship in a country whose so-called second economy is poverty-stricken.
“According to economists, economic fundamentals are in place and show that South Africa has the ability to grow its economy by 6% per annum by 2010. If all these things are in place, we should be able to halve the unemployment and poverty by 2014,” Pela added.
Nedlac aims to make economic decision-making more inclusive in addition to promoting goals of economic growth and social equity. The organisation comprises the government, organised business, organised labour and organised community groupings, which participate in four different chambers. — I-Net Bridge