Fin24 reports that overall employment across non-agricultural businesses, such as factories, offices and stores, as well as national, provincial and local government entities increased by 90,000, or 0.9%, year-on-year between December 2016 and December 2015.  

Yet, the mining sector shed 4,000 employees over that period, Statistics SA indicated in its latest Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) on Friday.  On a quarterly basis, employment grew by 18,000 jobs – from 9,672,000 in September to 9,690,000 in December 2016.  Employment increases over the full year period occurred in trade (2.8%), business services (0.7%), construction (2.4%), manufacturing (0.5%) and community services (0.6%).  Besides the mining and quarrying industry, a decrease in employment was recorded in the transport sector (-3.2%).  The latest QES also showed that gross earnings paid to employees increased by R37.8bn (6.6%) in the period December 2015 to December 2016.

• Read this report by Liesl Peyper in full at Fin24

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