Numbers released by StatisticsSA shows that the biggest job losses were observed in trade (119,000), manufacturing (100,000) and construction (77,000). It was only social services and agriculture that gave the county some glimmer of hope with employment levels showing some increases in these sectors with increases of 51,000 and 16,000 respectively.
The 2.2% decline translates into 355,000 jobs lost in Q1 of 2016, which combined with an increase in the number of unemployed persons of 521,000 resulted in an unemployment rate of 26.7%. Comparing year-on-your figures with Q1 in 2015 figures were in fact up with 204,000 more people employed.
Despite the quarterly increase, employment in Agriculture was lower by 15,000 compared to a year ago. The opposite pattern was observed in Mining, Construction, Trade and Finance & other business services.
The Democratic Alliance’s shadow minister of finance, David Maynier, said it is “staggering that 355 000 people lost their jobs in the first quarter of this year, especially when one considers that for every person who loses their job, approximately four people depend on them”.
He said the fact that 8.9 million people do not have jobs, or have given up on looking for jobs, cannot be blamed on external factors alone, and has much to do with the failure of the ANC government to implement the structural reforms necessary to boost economic growth and create jobs in South Africa.
The expanded unemployment rate which includes those who were available to work but did not look for work in the reference period also increased by 2.5 percentage points between Q4: 2015 and Q1: 2016 to 36.3%, StatsSA said.
