Job creation edges up

The unemployment rate declined in the past three months and those with jobs now number 14million, a level last seen before the 2008 recession.

Statistics SA's Quarterly Labour Force Survey released in Pretoria yesterday recorded 308000 more jobs in the past three months.

The number of jobless dropped by 114000.

The figures equate to a 0.9% drop in unemployment, from 25.6% in the second quarter to 24.7% .

Compared to a year ago, in the third quarter of this year employment increased by 2.8% (383000) and unemployment decreased by 1.2% (58000).

Trade contributed the most to growth with 100000 new jobs, followed by community services (96000), financial sector (92000) and private households (39000).

Peter Buwembo, labour executive at Stats SA, said: "Both output and jobs have been on an upward trend in recent years but only in the third quarter has employment reached the 2008 peak."

But this growth has been blemished by job losses in manufacturing (68000), agriculture (6000) and construction (2000). The formal sector created 314000 more jobs to reach 10million.

Nedbank's economists said yesterday the rise in formal-sector jobs was encouraging.

"However, this does not reflect a sustained increase . Subdued growth on the back of still weak, although improving, global conditions and lacklustre domestic output growth point towards job creation remaining generally slow in the next few quarters," the bank said in a statement.

Employment in the informal sector decreased by 39000 to about 2million jobs.

Patrick Craven, spokesman for labour federation Cosatu, said the union would study the results in detail before commenting.

"We will comment on specific factors once we have studied the results in detail," he said.

Craven said the results proved wrong market commentators who said unemployment had worsened because of recent strikes.

"These statistics prove that employment is actually increasing. It disproves the argument that industrial actions were resulting in unemployment," he said.

At 52.7%, Gauteng has the highest employment rate while the Eastern Cape was lowest at 31.3%.

According to the survey, 2.2million are discouraged from looking for work while 12.6million were not economically active.