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South Africa: Unemployment Drops to 23 Percent
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Mariam Isa
Johannesburg
SA's unemployment rate has fallen to 23%, the lowest since records began in 2000, on a surge in jobs for community workers and domestic help -- areas dominated by women-- official data showed yesterday.
The female jobless rate dived to 26,7% last September from 30,7% in the same month the previous year, showing women accounted for most of the net 433000 rise in jobs, the latest biannual Labour Force Survey from Statistics SA showed.
The number of domestic workers rose to a record 1,06- million, accounting for 8% of the 13,23-million employed South Africans, in a trend which may stem from rapid growth in SA's black middle class.
"There has been a big increase in household workers, mainly in Gauteng, which is the economy's powerhouse," said Yandiswa Mbetsheni, head of household labour data at Stats SA. "It seems more people can afford domestic workers."
Unemployment among black South African men and women fell, but the jobless rate for men overall dipped modestly to 20% from 21,2%, the data showed.
SA's official jobless rate has steadily fallen from a peak of 31,2% in 2003. It declined from 25,5% in September 2006, as job creation in the economy's formal sector more than offset a sharp fall in the informal sector.
Household employment -- which refers mainly to maids -- added 137000 jobs last year while personal services added 132000 jobs, Stats SA said.
The community and social services industry -- SA's second biggest employer after retail trade, accounting for 18,5% of jobs -- includes teachers, police and health workers as well as private workers such as beauticians.
In the fourth quarter of last year, employment rose by 2,3% from the same quarter in the previous year, a separate employment and earnings report from Stats SA showed.
The main impetus for a 65000 increase in formal jobs in the final quarter came from finance, insurance and real estate -- the economy's biggest sector.
Analysts said the pickup in job creation was positive, but still fell well short of the pace needed to meet official goals of halving unemployment by 2014.
"The fall in unemployment, particularly among black South Africans, is good news, but we still have some way to go," said Standard Bank economist Shireen Darmalingam.
"We need to create more than 138 000 jobs per quarter and 558 000 a year to halve unemployment by 2014."
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According to the expanded definition of employment, which includes discouraged job seekers, SA's jobless rate fell to 35,8% in September from 37% the previous year, Stats SA said.
That includes people who would like to work but have not actively looked for jobs in the past four weeks. Despite the lower expanded jobless rate, the number of discouraged job seekers rose to 3,4-million last September from 3,2-million the previous year. A total of 2,1-million jobs were created between September 2001 and September last year, a rise of 18,8%, the Stats SA data showed.
That suggest faster economic growth has helped spur job creation, as the economy has expanded by an average of more than 5% over each of the past four years.
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