2,2 Million Jobs Lost In Second Quarter, Technicality Cannot Hide Grim Reality

THEBE MABANGA

AT LEAST 2.2 million people lost their jobs in the second quarter of 2020, figures from Statistics South Africa showed on Tuesday.

This means that the number of the formally employed fell from 16.3 million in the first quarter to 14.1 million. 

This is the largest quarterly decline in employment since the Quarterly Labour Force Survey has been compiled.

At the same time, the number of unemployed fell by 2.8 million from 7 million to 4.3 million as jobseekers were under lockdown restrictions.

This led to the labour force shrinking by 5 million people, from 23.4 million to 18.4 million people.

The shrinking of the labour force led to the official unemployment rate falling from 30.1% in the first quarter of this year to 23.3% in the second quarter.

But this is only due to a technicality.

The unemployment rate according to the expanded definition of unemployment increased by 2.3 percentage points to 42.0%