THE latest statistics of our labour force have been released. The statistics are now being produced on an annual basis and will provide current and fresh data to analyse our labour force. As our Statistician-General Dr John Steytler said when he released the 2013 Report of the Labour Force Survey, now with an annual survey we can actually make real comparisons from one year to the next.
This makes Namibia's economy more flexible, agile and able to respond and adapt to changing economic, social and employment changes, he highlighted. The report of the Labour Force Survey 2013 tells us that our population is about 2.1 million. Out of this population there are those that are considered economically active and those considered economically inactive. The economically active include all those within the working age group of 15 years and above. This excludes those that are below the age of 15 years in addition to those considered students, pensioners, ill, disabled and those on early retirement. This group is referred to as the economically inactive one. To get an indication of our economic activity rate, or labour force participation rate, we take the proportion of the economically active population in a given population group for assessment. The just released information tells us that our labour force consists of 690 thousand employed persons as compared to 290 thousand that are unemployed. This gives us a labour participation rate of around 70 percent and an unemployment rate of 29.6 percent.
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