Lockdown job losses ‘will shock SA’
Stats SA announced on Tuesday that the unemployment rate for the first quarter of the year rose to 30.1%.
The latest stats show that employment decreased by 38,000 to 16,4-million and the number of unemployed persons increased by 344,000 to 7,1-million.
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Efficient Group economist Dr Francois Stofberg says the latest increase comes as no surprise.
“The reason is quite simple. The population is increasing at about 2% and the economy is only increasing by 1% and there is this 1% deficit every year which is why we see unemployment continue to increase.
“In fact, unemployment is a long-term trend now in South Africa as levels were at about 22% in the early 1990’s and 1980s and now reaching record highs.’’
He predicts that the job losses suffered by the country during the lockdown is going to shock South Africans.
“We were expecting unemployment creeping up… and obviously that is a number for the first quarter and is just before we went into lockdown.
“We have not really seen those figures yet and those figures will be a substantial additional shock.”