Unemployment figures questioned.

[Dave A]

Just last week stats were released to indicate that unemployment had eased, albeit ever so slightly. Now there seems to be questions about those figures. It seems there might be a lot of temporary employment that has distorted the figures.

Statistics South Africa reported last week that there were 544 000 new jobs in the year to March and noted a "slightly upward trend" in employment after about 700 000 jobs were lost between 2001 and 2003.

----

"In the previous survey ... it was reported that 138 000 jobs had been lost in agriculture. A finding that 147 000 new job opportunities were created immediately thereafter, seems extremely suspect," Lourie Bosman, president of farmers' union AgriSA, said in a statement.

"It simply makes no economic sense that a sector that shows no growth can create jobs on such a massive scale," he said, adding that nearly half of the 1,3-million jobs in agriculture were temporary.

----

Labour federation the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), a political ally of the ruling African National Congress and frequent critic of government policies, highlighted that about 130 000 jobs were lost in the period surveyed.
full story from M&G here

I was not that excited about the improvement claimed. Nowhere near enough to sort out the unemployment problems of the country, but at least it seemed a step in the right direction.

Now it seems that the figures need to be qualified - a fact that Stats SA should have pointed out.

[entoserv]

We've struggled to make a dent when the economy was flying.

It looks like the brakes are going on now. So how is it going to get better from here.