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Stats SA has released the latest unemployment figures for the third quarter of 2020, providing a clearer indication of how the national lockdown hit jobs in South Africa.
The results of the Quarterly Labor Force Survey (QLFS) for the third quarter of 2020 show a large movement from the category “other not economically active” to the categories “employed” and “unemployed” between the second and third quarters of the year. .
This paints a better picture of how the blockade affected jobs in the country. In the second quarter data, Stats SA handled the jobs lost as a result of the lockdown by removing them from the workforce, rather than classifying them as unemployed.
This had the effect of actually reducing the country’s unemployment rate: 23.3%.
With that classification now feeding into the more typical categories of ’employed’ and ‘unemployed’, the country’s narrow definition of unemployment rose to 30.8%, with the broader definition (which includes discouraged job seekers) at 43, 1%.
The move, according to the second quarter ranking, was proportionally more to the unemployed than to the employed, Stats SA said.
The number of employed people increased by 543,000 (3.8%) to 14.7 million compared to the second quarter of 2020 – employment remains almost 1.7 million below the level of the third quarter of 2019.
Unemployment increased substantially by 2.2 million (52.1%) to 6.5 million, compared to the second quarter of 2020.
The number of discouraged job seekers increased by 225,000 (9.1%), and the number of people who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement decreased by 2.9 million (15.8%) between the two quarters.
Simply put, of the 2.85 million people who ‘left’ the country’s workforce during the shutdown, only 543,000 managed to get their jobs back, leaving 2.2 million unemployed and 225,000 joining the group of discouraged job seekers.
A more positive twist from the latest figures is that all sectors are increasing employment once again. However, this comes with the caveat that the numbers are still well below those presented before the close.
- Employment in the formal sector increased by 242,000 (2.4%);
- Employment in the informal sector at 176,000 (7.7%);
- Private households by 116,000 (11.5%), and
- Employment in agriculture increased by 9,000 (1.1%).
Employment increased in all industries except utilities and transportation. The industries that obtained the most jobs were finance (200,000), community and social services (137,000), and private households (116,000).
Compared to the third quarter of 2019, employment contracted in all industries except mining, where it was unchanged in the third quarter of 2020.
Most of the job losses were in commerce (400,000), manufacturing (300,000), community and social services (298,000), and construction (259,000).
Read: New data shows composition of South Africans with employment
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