SOUTH Africa’s largest trade union body, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), has pooh-poohed official statistics which suggest that the unemployment rate stands at 22.5% – saying the real figure is closer to 40%.
The government’s statistics service, Statistics SA (Stats SA), said about one in five members of the workforce were without jobs in February 2000. This figure was based on two separate surveys, including one that covered 10_000 households.
Cosatu said it had no doubt the unemployment rate was much higher.
“We see unemployment staying at about 39% through our research,” said COSATU?s Siphiwe Mgcina.
Stats SA annual household surveys show the country’s unemployment rate rose gradually from 20% in 1994, the year of the country’s first all-race elections, to a peak of 25.2% in 1998.
The black population, systematically discriminated against under apartheid rule, is the worst affected by unemployment, according to Stats SA. Black unemployment in 1999 was about 6% higher than the official rate, standing at 29.2% compared with an overall 23.3%.
The unemployment rate for whites was only 4.7%, while it was 15.2% for coloureds and 15.6% among Indians.
Unemployment is highest in the largely rural provinces, topping 50.2% in the Northern Province and 46.7% in the Eastern Cape province.
A private labour consultancy, p.e.o.p.l.e, released a report indicating a 3% drop in formal sector jobs in 2000 and a 15% loss in the decade to 2000.
“2000 was the first year in which public-sector job losses outstrip private-sector job losses – a 4% loss against 2%,” their chairman Andrew Levy said.
Their research showed the “growing importance of the informal sector as a generator of jobs” since it provided 1.9 million jobs in 2000.
They also found a sharp drop in the number of days lost through strikes, down to half a million in 2000 from 3.1 million in 1999, based on Department of Labour figures.
Meanwhile they reported that trade union membership had fallen from 3.8 million in 1998 to 3.3 million in 1999 – accounting for only about 30% of the 15.9 million economically active South Africans. – AFP
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