Sign up with GoogleCLAIMS of major headway in the fight against unemployment appear to be grossly overblown. New figures obtained from Statistics SA after this week’s release of the biannual Labour Force Survey present a markedly different picture. They show that more than a quarter of the new jobs created in the year to March were the result of a state-funded agrarian reform programme in one province, Eastern Cape.
All these new jobs were in the informal sector, most likely subsistence farming, which holds few benefits for the economy, and does little to lift people out of poverty. The survey showed that 544000 new jobs were created in the year to March, bringing the official unemployment rate down to 25,6%, from 26,5% a year earlier.
Particularly startling was the claim that of these new jobs, 147000 (or 27% of the total) were in the agricultural sector, which is in recession, having contracted by 33% over the past two quarters.
In the second quarter, its contribution to gross domestic product sank below 3% for the first time in history.
“How is it possible for such a sector to create jobs at such a rate?” asked Kobus Kleynhans, director of labour affairs at Agri SA, on Friday. “I really take these statistics with my tongue very deep in my cheek.”
Under the Green Revolution, prospective farms were supplied with fencing, stock water dams and boreholes, dipping tanks, tractors and other implements, irrigation schemes and human resource development.
These are paid for mainly with grants from national government, says Black.
T-Sec economist and labour specialist Mike Schussler said on Friday that the figures showing 37% growth in informal farming jobs were “a little unbelievable”.
“It indicates a lot more people are living off subsistence in agriculture, but the growth is not in line with GDP growth in agriculture,” says Schussler.
Taking a longer-term view, data showed a 35% drop in informal farming jobs since 2000, while formal jobs have declined 21% in the same period, he said.
“A lot more people are helping themselves,” he said. About 25% of all white men have started their own businesses — the biggest such group, followed by 19,6% of all black women. Many of the latter group will be found in subsistence farming, said Schussler.
The political implications of the failure to make a significant dent in unemployment could be far-reaching. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has long maintained, and did so again after this week’s labour survey release, that the jobs being created are so meaningless as to merely increase the number of “working poor”.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/weekender.aspx?ID=BD4A280988
All these new jobs were in the informal sector, most likely subsistence farming, which holds few benefits for the economy, and does little to lift people out of poverty. The survey showed that 544000 new jobs were created in the year to March, bringing the official unemployment rate down to 25,6%, from 26,5% a year earlier.
Particularly startling was the claim that of these new jobs, 147000 (or 27% of the total) were in the agricultural sector, which is in recession, having contracted by 33% over the past two quarters.
In the second quarter, its contribution to gross domestic product sank below 3% for the first time in history.
“How is it possible for such a sector to create jobs at such a rate?” asked Kobus Kleynhans, director of labour affairs at Agri SA, on Friday. “I really take these statistics with my tongue very deep in my cheek.”
Under the Green Revolution, prospective farms were supplied with fencing, stock water dams and boreholes, dipping tanks, tractors and other implements, irrigation schemes and human resource development.
These are paid for mainly with grants from national government, says Black.
T-Sec economist and labour specialist Mike Schussler said on Friday that the figures showing 37% growth in informal farming jobs were “a little unbelievable”.
“It indicates a lot more people are living off subsistence in agriculture, but the growth is not in line with GDP growth in agriculture,” says Schussler.
Taking a longer-term view, data showed a 35% drop in informal farming jobs since 2000, while formal jobs have declined 21% in the same period, he said.
“A lot more people are helping themselves,” he said. About 25% of all white men have started their own businesses — the biggest such group, followed by 19,6% of all black women. Many of the latter group will be found in subsistence farming, said Schussler.
The political implications of the failure to make a significant dent in unemployment could be far-reaching. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has long maintained, and did so again after this week’s labour survey release, that the jobs being created are so meaningless as to merely increase the number of “working poor”.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/weekender.aspx?ID=BD4A280988