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The KwaZulu-Natal MEC for finance, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, says that the coronavirus pandemic and economic woes have had a dramatic impact on employment in the province.
Introducing the second annual adjustments budget to the provincial legislature on Tuesday (Nov 24), Dube-Ncube said the second quarter of 2020 was particularly damaging for the province at the height of the country’s lockdown.
He said the provincial GDP growth rate fell by a “devastating” 51.6% during this period.
“Our projections indicate that economic growth in the province will contract by at least 9.1% this year, before moderating to 1.5% next year,” he said.
“The largest negative contributors to provincial economic growth in the second quarter of 2020 were mining and quarrying, which contracted by 75.5%; constructions in 75.3%; 75.1% manufacturing and 68.9% wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants ”.
Dube-Ncube added that the rapid rise in settlements has led to a worrisome rise in the expanded unemployment rate, which is currently estimated at 47.5% in KwaZulu-Natal compared to 43.1% nationally.
“This implies that five out of ten people in KwaZulu-Natal are unemployed,” he said.
National data from Statistics South Africa shows that the total number of forced and voluntary liquidations increased by 54% in September compared to the same month last year.
Results from the Third Quarter Labor Force Survey (QLFS) published by Stats SA put South Africa’s unemployment rate at 30.8% – 43.1% in the expanded definition, which includes discouraged job seekers who have stopped looking for work.
Nedbank It forecasts that around 500,000 jobs will be lost in South Africa this year, with the country’s labor market only reaching its pre-crisis peak in the second half of 2023.
In July, a team of South African researchers has published the National Income Dynamics Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) which analyzes the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown across the country.
The study surveyed 7,000 South Africans and can be considered the most nationally representative survey currently in existence, the researchers said.
The key finding was that approximately three million people lost their jobs during the lockdown period, representing an 18% decrease in employment from 17 million people employed in February to 14 million people employed in April 2020.
Taking into account a 95% confidence interval, the decrease in the number of people employed from February to April was likely between 2.5 million and 3.6 million, the researchers said.
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