Unemployment Still a Problem in South Africa


By Laikyn Setloboko    12-Sep-2013 11:49 UTC+02:00 1
thedominican.net

Image: Thedominican.net

South Africa is facing an unemployment crisis. Every month there is a high number of job losses in the country. Up to  34 654 jobs were lost last  month , according to the figures recently released by Adcorp.

The employment index revealed that the majority of job lossess occured in permanent jobs , which in total shed 26 820 during the month , followed by12 845 temporary jobs. However, signs of a positive 3%  GDP growth were seen in the second quarter in 2013  from 0,9% in the first quarter.

The mining , construction , transport and financial services industries, have all suffered blows to job losses amounting to 26 000. The reserve banks quarterly bulletin outlined its September findings  similar to those of Adcorp.

Such challenges have been exacerbated by the decline of the US dollar price of gold since October 2012. It is also alleged that the high number of absenteeism in the working  force contributed much to the main factor for large companies, forcing employers to rely more on temporary jobs.

Absenteeism has cost the companies dearly  given that since the beginning of 2013 , there has been an estimation of 3,96 million workers that were absent due to sickness, from 0.7 million  in the year 2000 . This shows a dramatic increase of 466% , even though the number of people employed was flat over the decade.

“Due to unpredictable circumstances, and the nature of sick leave, knock on disruptive effects on supply chains has probably been greater than these figures suggest. Furthermore this may be the result that led to this growing phenomenon of temporary jobs in South Africa.” Loane Sharp, labour economist at Adcorp holding said. The economy has suffered immensely and the cost is enormous. The Government needs to come up with a strategy to alleviate unemployment.



  Comments


  1. Ivin Viljoen says:

    Laikyn, the number of people that loose their jobs on a monthly basis is really shocking, it makes you wonder how many loose their jobs in a years time. It looks like the lack of skills is not the only thing that is to blame for the high rate of unemployment. This has been a very informative article.

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