Today's Labour News

Engineering News reports that trade union Solidarity said on Thursday that SA’s official unemployment numbers as announced this week by Statistics SA, although alarming, nonetheless painted a rosier picture than the reality many people experienced.  

The jobless rate rose to 29% of the labour force in the second quarter of 2019.  But unemployment was even higher at 38.5% when using the expanded definition, which included people discouraged from actively looking for work.  On Thursday, Morné Malan, a senior researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute, said although the use of the narrow definition of unemployment was common practice around the world and recommended by the International Labour Organisation, this measurement was inaccurate for SA’s labour force.  "South Africa has an exceptionally large gap between the narrow definition of the unemployment rate and the expanded definition (and) we have a particularly low labour absorption rate (42.4 percent).  A 2013 study at the University of KwaZulu-Natal indicates that so-called discouraged jobseekers, who are not counted as unemployed in the official rate, are in no way less likely to be employed than so-called active jobseekers," Malan indicated.  He added that the government was causing the problem with counter-productive policies such as minimum wage, strict labour legislation, intensified enforcement of black economic empowerment, and many more.  "The only solution to the problem is for government to eliminate these barriers to doing business in South Africa,” Malan said.

• Read the original of the above report at Engineering News
• Read Solidarity’s press statement in the above regard at SA Labour News

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page