Black job stats double since 1994: report

The number of black people in South Africa in employment has more than doubled since 1994, highlighting the transformative nature of the country's labour market.

This is revealed in the Institute of Race Relations' transformation audit, which reveals that racial transformation of the workplace has been significant and continues to improve.

The report said data from Stats SA showed that close to 5 million black people had a job in 1994 and this increased to 11.5million last year.

The institute said critics who claimed there was jobless growth and that the labour market was biased against black people were wrong on the facts.

It said the unemployment rate had remained unchanged since 1994, despite the extent of job growth. The rising participation rate in the labour market meant the extent of job growth had remained insufficient to reduce the unemployment rate.

The institute said the number of black African people employed as managers increased by 176.3% since 2001.

The Institute of Race Relations said that if transformation could be said to be "held back", that would be primarily because of failures in education.

"Our sense is that the extent of racial transformation in the economy is informed by the performance of the education system.

"If transformation is said to be 'held back', that would be primarily because of failures in education and not a lack of will," the institute's chief operating officer, Gwen Ngwenya, said.

She said while black South Africans accounted for 80.7% of the population they constituted only 51.4% of all people with a post-matric qualification.

She said the education levels of black South Africans presented a "transformation ceiling".

"Putting in place targets beyond the available pool of skills places an unrealisable goal on employers and will strangle economic growth," Ngwenya said.