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BL Premium writes that the true cost of the Covid-19 pandemic was writ large in SA’s record-beating unemployment numbers on Tuesday, ratcheting up the pressure for reforms to unlock investment and boost job creation.
The drop in the number of employed people during a year characterised by a hard economic lockdown, limitations on travel and sales bans on alcohol and tobacco products stood at almost 1.4-million year-on-year, with economists expecting that it will take years to win back those jobs. SA’s official unemployment rate during the fourth quarter of 2020 rose to 32.5%, according to data from Stats SA released on Tuesday. The increase in joblessness, from the third quarter’s 30.8%, set a new high for Stats SA’s quarterly labour force survey. "Overall the numbers are terrible. There is massive gap to make up in the years ahead," said Christie Viljoen, an economist for PwC, which forecasts that jobs numbers will return to 2019 levels only by 2024. On an annual basis all industries saw job numbers decline. Though the number of employed people increased by 333,000 in the fourth quarter to reach 15-million, this was outpaced by the rise in the number of unemployed people, which increased by 701,000 from the third quarter to 7.2-million as more people began looking for work. The fourth quarter’s additional jobs were largely evidence of people being able to return to work as the economy reopened and recovered some lost ground, rather than any evidence of job creation, said Viljoen.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Lynley Donnelly at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
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