This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
Fin24 reports that the head of the Statistics Council, the advisory board to Statistics SA, has raised the alarm on the quality of SA’s employment statistics, saying the poor response rate must be reversed if the numbers are to be worth anything.
The last Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the fourth quarter of last year revealed, on the narrow definition, that 35.3% of adults were unemployed. This was a record high since the survey began in 2008. But, several economists have questioned the numbers, arguing that the survey did not provide an accurate picture of the country. Of the sample of 30,000 households, the response rate hit a record low, with only 44.6% of the sample participating in the survey. In Gauteng, only 23% of respondents replied, with the response rate in the city of Johannesburg at 17.9%. The response rate led to a delay in the publication of the results and some results – such as those for the metros – were excluded from publication. The chairperson of the council, Wits professor David Everatt, said on Wednesday that he had called an urgent meeting of the council. "The QLFS was a big wake-up call. When the response rate was that low, we realised that we had to move," said Everatt. He indicated that two causes were immediately evident: The first was the switch from an in-person household survey to a telephone survey when Covid-19 struck in March 2020. The second was the growing evidence of a lack of trust between government and citizens, who had made it clear to field workers that they did not want to talk Stats SA staff. Economist Neva Makgetla said the numbers coming out of the QLFS have become difficult to believe, in the light of its divergence from SA’s other employment survey the Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES). The next publication of the QLFS, which was for the first quarter of 2022 and mostly done by telephone, is due out on 31 May.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Carol Paton at Fin24 (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page