The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the slight drop in the expanded unemployment rate from 42.6% in the second quarter to 41.9% in the third quarter of this year.
This is a welcome reprieve coming on the back of three consecutive quarters of job losses. About 294 000 more people were employed in third quarter. This was undoubtedly spurred on by the more than 220 days of no loadshedding. But Eskom needs more support if is to plug the financial holes, in particular the alarming levels of municipal debt owed to it.
Similar support needs to be given to Transnet to unlock the jobs and revenue rich mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors, as well as Metro Rail which is key to transporting 10 million urban commuters in particular to work.
Sectors that added the most jobs included Community Services, Construction and Trade. Decreases were recorded in Finance, Private Households and Manufacturing. The Eastern Cape, Western Cape and North West recorded a rise in employment, while Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal lost out.
Unemployment remains dangerously high among young people aged between 15 and 24 even though it decreased by 171 000.
While Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke says unemployment is decreasing at an increasing rate, government needs to accelerate this by filling critical vacancies at Home Affairs, Health Sector, Schools, the SAPS, NPA and Courts to ensure workers and the economy have access to efficient public services.
The state also needs to expedite capacitation programmes for the 140 struggling municipalities. This must be accompanied by urgent interventions to stabilise and rebuild local government and deliver municipal services. This is key to ensuring that government's bold R943 billion infrastructure programme is well spent.
It's critical that government reverse the irrational cuts to the Presidential Employment Stimulus in the 2025/26 Budget to accommodate at least 1 million participants by April and 2 million by November 2025.
As it did in 2022, government can provide relief to commuters and the economy by lowering fuel taxes. This will have the additional benefit of reducing inflation and encourage the Reserve Bank to decrease the repo rate further, providing relief to millions of workers who are suffocatingly indebted.
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The private sector needs to come to the party by halting the flood of retrenchments and to seek alternatives, by paying workers a living wage to stimulate growth and investing locally. Consumers from the state to the private sector and ordinary citizens too must support locally produced goods.
