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BusinessLive writes that President Cyril Ramaphosa has been dealt another blow as SA’s unemployment rate climbed to an 11-year high, nearing the 30% mark. Reducing the unemployment rate and putting the economy on a robust growth path are at the top of the priority list in Ramaphosa’s reform drive.
In 2018, at the inaugural jobs summit, he promised to create 275,000 jobs a year, but with the economy slowing this is looking increasingly unlikely. Unemployment jumped to 29% in the second quarter of 2019, which was much higher than expected. There were 6.7-million people without jobs in the three months to the end of June, compared with 6.2-million people in the prior quarter, data from Stats SA showed. “The unemployment situation — the product of years of economic mismanagement — is undoubtedly SA’s most pressing matter,” NKC analyst Jacques Nel said. Sizwe Pamla, spokesperson for labour federation Cosatu, said the government had done little to honour its agreements made at the jobs and investment summits held in 2018. “There is no government plan to solve the situation if the state of the nation is to be believed. A promise of 2-million jobs over 10 years when you have the highest unemployment rate in the world is an admission of defeat,” he noted. SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the rising unemployment trend in SA had become entrenched. “We have made endless calls to government to abandon the current economic policies they have embarked on. We have been marching and doing all sorts of things. We just don’t know anymore. We are just waiting for the implosion to happen,” he lamented.
- Read the full original of the above report by Sunita Menon and Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive
- Read Cosatu’s press statement on the unemployment rate at Polity
- Read Saftu’s press statement in response to the second quarter Labour Force Survey 2019, at Saftu News
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page