Cape Town - Despite maintaining the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the Western Cape suffered the most job losses between April and June, with 65 000 more people jobless compared to January.
Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter (Q2) of 2024 showed the biggest employment losses were recorded in the Western Cape (65 000), followed by Mpumalanga (50 000), KwaZulu-Natal (49 000), Northern Cape (17 000) and North West (12 000).
South Africa’s official unemployment rate has increased from 32.9% in Q1 of 2024 to 33.5% in Q2.
Reacting to the employment stats, Western Cape Premier Alan Winde said the province maintained the highest labour absorption rate in South Africa, at 52.9%, and the highest labour force participation rate, at 68.1%
“We clearly have a lot more work to do amid a severely constrained budgetary environment. In order to further enable the growth of the economy, we will not give up in fighting for our province’s fair share of funding to intensify our job creation efforts.
“Provincially, the biggest job losses were in the agriculture sector, which employed 38 000 fewer people in quarter 2 of the current financial year, compared to the same quarter last year,” said Winde.
Commenting on the decrease in agricultural jobs in the Western Cape, Agriculture, Economic Development and Tourism MEC Ivan Meyer said: “The numbers reflect the seasonality of the agricultural sector. Job numbers in quarter 1 and quarter 4 are traditionally higher than in quarter 2 and quarter 3.
“The province has also been hit by several severe storms, flooding, and strong winds, which have damaged agricultural infrastructure, severely impacting farming.”
Leader of the opposition in the Western Cape, the ANC’s Khalid Sayed, said he was concerned over the statistics in the Western Cape.
“Job creation is not keeping pace with job losses, nor our growing population, and we saw falls in the trade and construction sectors. It remains the case that our informal economies are not getting enough support and that our small and medium-sized businesses struggle with too much red tape.
“The focus of the GNU is on inclusive economic growth and job creation and the ANC urges the DA-led Western Cape government to do more to support jobs in our more disadvantaged communities,” Sayed said.
GOOD Party secretary-general Brett Herron said the Western Cape Growth for Jobs Strategy was, much like the Safety Plan, ineffective.
“In 2019, the premier promised ‘a job in every home’ and a provincial economic growth rate of 2% per annum. He has yet to account for the failure to deliver on those promises.
“Importantly, if the Growth for Jobs Plan is based on data, as it claims, then he has failed to explain why it promises 4% to 5% economic growth in his 2023 plan when he couldn’t even achieve the 2019 promise of 2%.
“We really do need a job in every home if we are to alleviate unacceptable and abnormal levels of poverty in our province, and people need a government that is effective in achieving its own targets rather than relying on the announcement of a plan as doing its job,” Herron said.
Nationally, increases in employment were recorded in manufacturing (49 000), community and social services (36 000), utilities (9 000), transport (3 000) and mining (2 000).
Cosatu provincial secretary Malvern de Bruyn said: “Whenever there’s job opportunities, we become happy because it means those people can now feed their families at home, but overall our concern is still the youth that is unemployed.”
The number of discouraged work-seekers across South Africa also increased by 147 000 (up by 4.8%)
Development economist at Stellenbosch Business School, Dr Nthabiseng Moleko, said the increase in discouraged work seekers was astronomical.
“It shows again that we are in a crisis state as a country and employment has decreased by 92 000 in the second quarter.
“This has a very serious effect on the lack of disposable income in households, but also it’s showing you that the ability of our economy to advance labour absorptive sectors is on the trajectory,” Moleko said.