The quarterly labour force survey (QLFS) for the second quarter of 2013
was released on Tuesday. In the months of April to June this year the
official unemployment rate rose to 25.6%, while the broader rate of
unemployment rose to 36.8%.
The
graph below shows the trend in the two rates over the last five and half
years. . Both measures of unemployment are just a tenth of a percentage
point below their records, set in the second quarter of 2011.
Over
the last two and a half years the official rate of unemployment has
averaged over 25%. Although the economy added 100 000 jobs for the
quarter, this was not enough to absorb all of the new entrants into the
labour market. The total number of employed people rose to 2008 levels
of some 13.7-million but the numbers of unemployed and discouraged
work-seekers rose to record levels.
The
number of unemployed people rose to 4.7-million and the number of
discouraged work-seekers to 2.4-million. Between these two groups there
are now over seven million people without work. The sharp increase in
the number of formally unemployed could be given a slightly positive
spin: it could mean that some formerly discouraged work-seekers had
started to look for work again. The growth in the number of discouraged
work-seekers is much more gradual than the growth in the unemployed, but
it’s still on its upward march.
There
isn’t much good news in the official QLFS release, but there is a sliver
of good news for the people who follow these sorts of things. StatsSA
has just revamped its website and has introduced some handy data
analysis tools, including a statistics generator that will give you
information down to the municipal level, including results from the 2011 census.
Those results should still be taken with a large pinch of salt
but if the employment-related statistics can be confirmed by QLFS
results, then there is cause for concern. The table below shows the 10
municipalities with the highest unemployment rates. Bear in mind that it
is narrow rate of unemployment being measured.
The
table below gives the 10 municipalities with the lowest unemployment
rates. Eight of the 10 are in the Western Cape and the other two are in
the Northern Cape.
It
could be that those areas of the Western Cape and Northern Cape have
very low levels of structural unemployment. After all, successful
metros, for example, tend to create jobs which attract in-migration.
This, paradoxically, can raise the unemployment rate in those metros.
Maybe
some of the municipalities with low unemployment rates have a high level
of economic migration out of them and into to the cities. Maybe they
have small populations with low growth. Maybe they are governed better.
If
these census-related numbers can be cross-referenced with QLFS numbers
they might confirm in which areas structural unemployment is worst. We
might be able to refine our understanding of unemployment patterns and
be able to answer important questions, for example. Is rural
unemployment due to failures in rural development?
Here
are a couple of last factoids gleaned from the new StatsSA tool. They
illustrate just how dire and stagnant the youth employment situation is.
The median rate of unemployment (ie the municipality that was in 90th
place out of 179 municipalities) is 42% for people aged 15 to 34. For
the worst quarter of municipalities, youth unemployment is 52% or
higher.
Maybe
most of these municipalities are small and sparsely populated, maybe the
absolute number of unemployed people is not as high as a first glance
would suggest. Suggesting upsides and looking for silver linings in the
employment numbers does seem to be a bit unrealistic – they are
miserable.
Gross domestic product growth for the year is forecast to remain around 2% and will probably stay below 3% over the medium term.
Our
population is young with hundreds of thousands of new job-seekers every
year. The numbers look sad now but they might look positively lachrymose
by the end of 2013.
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