COSATU's response to employment statistics
The Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomes the recently released Quarterly Labour Force Survey report for the third quarter of 2013.
The report shows that unemployment in the third quarter this year fell to 24.7%, from 25.6% in the second, increasing the number of employed people by 308,000. The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have lost hope of finding any kind of work, fell 1.2 percentage points to 35.6% in the same quarter.
However it is still early to celebrate as unemployment is still very high. Such high unemployment rates aggravate all the social problems which we see more and more - violent community protests, crime, corruption, xenophobia and the collapse of social and moral values. Such a level of unemployment is not just a personal and family disaster but a national catastrophe!
It is also worrying that the employed population is concentrated in the Elementary and Sales and services occupations, with shares of employment amounting to 21,7% and 14,7% respectively. Very few persons were employed in Skilled agriculture occupation (0,4%).
It is even more worrying that the Manufacturing and Construction were the industries with the largest job losses down by 32 000, 13 000 and 11 000 jobs respectively. Informal sector employment decreased by 39 000 jobs between second Quarter of 2013 and third of 2013 mainly due to job losses in the Manufacturing and Construction industries the report says.