The Sunday Times job-advertising space has risen by 25,3% year-on-year in the first four months this year, compared with an 8,7% increase in the first four months of 2004.
This points to a strong employment market in 2005, as changes in job-recruitment space tend to lead changes in employment.
This relationship is so strong that the South African Reserve Bank (and most other central banks) uses the data in compiling their leading economic indicator.
In April this year, the increase was 25,5% year-on-year, compared with March’s 27,8% rise after a surge of 36,2% in January.
South Africa has been in a prolonged period of restructuring, which resulted in a decline in employment in the formal non-agricultural sectors, but the latest official labour market statistics indicate a welcome reversal of this trend.
On May 20, President Thabo Mbeki questioned the employment figures produced by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) and said it is “quite unlikely” that its figures are correct — otherwise there would be millions of people in the streets looking for work.
“This is such a large number of people that nobody could possibly have missed the million(s) that would be in the streets and village paths actively looking for work — which was part of the definition of employment used by Stats SA.”
Instead, Mbeki argued, studies of the South African labour market suggest that the country’s economy has both shed and created jobs, with the number of jobs created exceeding jobs lost through retrenchment.
He said in his weekly column ANC Today — in his capacity as ruling African National Congress leader — that T-Sec economist Mike Schussler recently pointed out that the number of jobs in the formal economy grew by 1% in 2002, about 2% in 2003 and then 2,7% last year — a total of 345 000 jobs over three years.
Medium-size businesses are the companies increasing employment the most, at a rate of 6% for 2004.
Small firms that already employ about 2,3-million people grew payrolls by 2,5%, a rate matched by large companies, while public-sector employment only increased by 0,6%.
“The strong rand has hurt the employment growth rate, but despite the headlines, we are still adding jobs on a monthly basis. Based on our research, we expect employment growth to ease to 1,5% this year from 2,7% last year, as construction growth offsets retrenchments in the mining sector,” Schussler said.
Cement sales in South Africa rose by 17,4% in 2004 to a record 10,69-million tonnes, compared with a 7% rise in 2003.
The fourth bi-annual Johncom work-in-life survey released in December 2004 showed that there was a perception of increased job security: three-quarters of respondents felt secure in their jobs, compared with 68% in 2002.
When it came to finding a new job, more than three-quarters of respondents read recruitment advertisements in newspapers, which is why these advertisements are so highly correlated with changes in employment. — I-Net Bridge