Employment crunch continues

SOUTH Africa lost a further 129000 jobs over all employment sectors excluding agriculture between June and September, Statistics SA reports in its latest update.

This meant that the number of people working in the formal sector dropped from 8.67 million in June to 8.54 million in September.

If compared with last year, however, there were 83000 more jobs in the country, according to the report.

But in Nelson Mandela Bay there have been several large-scale job losses as businesses closed, scaled down operations or went into liquidation.

Uitenhage automotive supplier firm SP Metal Forgings is laying off 150 workers, more than 10 furniture retailers in the Bay which are part of Ellerine Holdings have shut operations since August, while Continental Tyre SA, Telkom, MTN and Cell C have also shed jobs.

According to the Stats SA report, the total national job losses for the quarter included 132000 positions lost in the government sector, mostly due to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) shedding a large number of jobs after the general elections in May this year.

Also, 9000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing industry, while 3000 jobs were lost in both the construction and transport industries.

On the positive side, the number of jobs in mining, finance and trade increased by 18000.

Year-on-year, an additional 83000 formal jobs were created between September last year and September this year. This reflects an annual increase of 1%.

The largest increase was recorded by community services industries (73000), followed by the trade and finance industries, with 21000 and 20000 jobs respectively.

The mining industry recorded the largest quarterly percentage increase of 20.9% in earnings, signalling a return of workers after the lengthy strike in the platinum belt, according to the Stats SA release.

Statistician-general Pali Lehola said research further showed that the gross earnings paid to employees increased by R18.9-billion (4.6%) from R409-billion in June this year to R428-billion in September.

This was mainly due to increases in the financial sector, insurance, real estate and business services industry with the biggest increases recorded for the mining industry (20.9%).

A decrease of R118-million in salary payments was noted in the transport, storage and communication industries. - Estelle Ellis