Job+losses+grim+news+for+SA,+Finance24



=Job losses 'grim news for SA'=

Finance24, June 28 2005 07:10:58:607PM
Pretoria - Formal employment in the non-agricultural business sector dropped by 1.9%, or 136 000 jobs, from last December to March this year, Statistics SA said on Tuesday.

The number of employees dropped from 7.075 million to 6.939 million over the period, it announced in Pretoria.

The Congress of SA Trade Unions described the data as "grim news for the millions of South African families who already suffer from the effects of mass unemployment and poverty".

It has long warned, the trade union federation said, that the expansion in employment over the past two years was not sustainable.

It had been largely due to growth in construction and retail jobs while the productive core of the economy stagnated.

Cosatu, which held a one-day strike against unemployment on Monday, said the figures added weight to its call for the restructuring of the economy toward sustainable, job-creating growth.

This included devaluing the currency.

The decrease in employees was due both to seasonal workers employed over Christmas becoming unemployed again, and to retrenchments.

More temporary workers than usual were hired over Christmas.

Stats SA also announced an 8.4% drop in gross earnings - salaries and wages - from December to March.

This reflected a quarterly decrease of R13 386bn.

The latest figures are contained in Stats SA's first release of its new Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES), which replaces the old Survey of Employment and Earnings (SEE).

The new survey includes all businesses registered to pay income tax, while its predecessor focused only on those with a minimum R300 000 annual turnover and registered for VAT.

The QES includes about 25 000 businesses while the SEE had about 10 000.

While the SEE covered employing and non-employing businesses, the QES looks only at employing enterprises.

The reason for the change, Stats SA said in a statement, was that the SEE did not allow it to calculate estimates of average monthly earnings, because it did not separate employees from the self-employed and employers.

The QES excludes employers and the self-employed, but has extended its scope to include small businesses.

In its report released on Tuesday, Stats SA said the drop in employment was largely in the "financial intermediation, insurance, real estate and business services industry", which shed about 125 000 jobs.

This was probably largely due to an increase in security company activity over the December holidays, followed by retrenchments in quieter times.

A total of 30 000 jobs were lost in:

the wholesale and retail trade;

repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods; and

the hotels and restaurants industry.


 * From: http://www.finance24.com/articles/default/display_article.asp?Nav=ns&ArticleID=1518-1786_1728673**