South Africa: Job creation stuttering despite economic improvements
23 November 2012
While conditions in the South African economy as a whole have improved in the last few years, job creation remains restrained and the country’s labour market has seen little structural improvement.
Fri, 23 Nov 2012
While conditions in the South African economy as a whole have improved in the last few years, job creation remains restrained and the country’s labour market has seen little structural improvement.
This is according to the Department of Labour’s Annual Labour Market Bulletin for 2011/12, available via the body’s website here.
The report shows that there is little improvement in the structure of employment and this means that there is still a problem with regard to the shortfall of labour demand and supply in the labour market.
It also finds that professionals were in the highest demand in the labour market, followed by managers and clerical and administrative workers, while elementary workers, machine operators and drivers were also in demand.
In the first year covered by the report (2009/10), there were 45 work stoppages due to strikes nationwide, which increased to 53 in the next year and 67 the year after that. This was most notably due to incidences in the manufacturing industry, and comes as trade union membership rose 11% over the period, despite the number of unions dropping by 1%.
The report concludes by saying that employment creation should continue to be a policy priority and government needs to support small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) to integrate the youth in the mainstream of the economy.
While conditions in the South African economy as a whole have improved in the last few years, job creation remains restrained and the country’s labour market has seen little structural improvement.
This is according to the Department of Labour’s Annual Labour Market Bulletin for 2011/12, available via the body’s website here.
The report shows that there is little improvement in the structure of employment and this means that there is still a problem with regard to the shortfall of labour demand and supply in the labour market.
It also finds that professionals were in the highest demand in the labour market, followed by managers and clerical and administrative workers, while elementary workers, machine operators and drivers were also in demand.
In the first year covered by the report (2009/10), there were 45 work stoppages due to strikes nationwide, which increased to 53 in the next year and 67 the year after that. This was most notably due to incidences in the manufacturing industry, and comes as trade union membership rose 11% over the period, despite the number of unions dropping by 1%.
The report concludes by saying that employment creation should continue to be a policy priority and government needs to support small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) to integrate the youth in the mainstream of the economy.
