High-skilled jobs at risk

Being skilled is no insurance against losing your job.

More than 12000 highly skilled South Africans lost their jobs last month, Adcorp's employment index showed yesterday.

Job creation is a major driver in government policy in an economy in which growth in gross domestic product slowed last year to 2.5%.

But even growth rates of 5% in the last decade did not translate into job creation on a large scale.

South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates among middle-income countries.

According to Adcorp's Loane Sharp, it was the first time in 15 years that so many high-skill jobs had been lost.

"These perturbing job numbers cut right across the employment sector and are coupled with worrying trends in terms of both unfilled vacancies for skilled people in South Africa's private sector [829000 in 2012] and unemployed graduates, who have now topped at 580000," said Sharp.

Worst hit were the wholesale and retail trades, in which 9000 jobs were lost as consumers cut back on their spending.

Consumer confidence hit a nine-year low, according to a quarterly survey by First National Bank and the Bureau for Economic Research, released earlier this week.

One of the reasons for the pessimism, according to FNB chief economist Sizwe Nxedlana, is the deterioration in the outlook for job creation.

With the economic downturn in Europe still dampening appetite for South African manufactured goods, the manufacturing sector cut 8000 jobs last month, according to Adcorp.

The index also showed that about 40000 people who worked in the formal sector of the economy a month ago are now unemployed or going it alone.

Adcorp's monthly index is not the official measure of employment.

The latest quarterly labour force survey by Statistics SA showed in February that the labour force decreased by 235000 between the third and fourth quarter of last year.

The number of employed people declined by 68000 over the fourth quarter.