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South Africa shed 2,2 million jobs during the second quarter, according to Statistics South Africa (StatsSA).

While the employment figures reflected the largest decline in employment between the second and first quarter since 2008, StatsSA yesterday said unemployment fell substantially as well, decreasing by 2,8 million to 4,3 million.

The official employment rate is now 23,3 percent, compared to the first quarter’s 30,1 percent.

Peter Attard Montalto, economist at Intellidex said that it is best to rely on the expanded definition of unemployment — which would see the rate between 42,6 percent and 52,7 percent, which is more realistic.

The expanded definition includes persons who were not employed when surveyed and were available to work but did not look for work either because they are discouraged from looking for work or did not look for work for other reasons other than discouragement.

Economists had anticipated record high unemployment, due to poor economic conditions.

Nearly a million job losses were projected for the single quarter — this matches the job losses in the 12 months following the global financial crisis, Investec had forecasted an unemployment rate of 37.9 percent.

Government had implemented a nationwide lockdown in March in order to slow the spread of Covid-19.

During April, only essential goods and services were operational and economic activity was limited with lockdown restrictions at their highest level.

As a result GDP contracted by 51 percent, on a quarter-on-quarter, annualised basis. Non-annualised, the contraction was 16,4 percent.

In its September quarterly bulletin, released yesterday, the Reserve Bank noted that the lockdown had brought about logistical complications for Stats SA — contributing to the delay of the release of the employment data.

“The number of unemployed South Africans had already increased significantly in the year to the first quarter of 2020 due to a surge in the number of new and re-entrants into the labour market who failed to find employment.

“The official unemployment rate increased to a record high of 30,1 percent in the first quarter of 2020, reflecting the impact of the economic recession that had already started in the third quarter of 2019,” the bulletin read.

Stats SA said that it had to change the mode of collection of data to adapt to Covid-19 safety protocols.

“Given the change in the survey mode of collection and the fact that Q2: 2020 estimates are not based on a full sample, comparisons with previous quarters should be made with caution,” StatsSA said. – news24.com