unemployment

Unemployed on the Increase – Stats SA

Wednesday 5 May, 2010 - 9:09

The Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) says the unemployment rate for the first quarter of 2010 increased 0.9 of a percentage point to 25.2 percent.

Stats SA, which released the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the first quarter of 2010, found that the total number of unemployed is 4.3 million for the first quarter of 2010.

Employment declined by 171 000 between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, with the formal sector losing 140 000 jobs and the informal sector shedding 100 000.

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SA Urged to Tackle Poverty and Unemployment

Tuesday 27 April, 2010 - 10:21

Independent political analyst, Somadoda Fikeni, says poverty and the high rate of unemployment in the country still poses a huge challenge to South African citizens, 16-years into the country's democracy.

Fikeni points out that while some work has been achieved, unemployment, HIV and education are still the biggest problems the government must work hard to improve.

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Increase in Unemployment Benefit Claims

Monday 19 April, 2010 - 12:58

Labour minister, Membathisi Mdladlana, says the number of South Africans claiming unemployment benefits surged an annual 71 percent in the year through February as factories and mines cut jobs amid the country’s first recession in 17 years.

Mdladlana says the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) paid out a total of R5.3 billion to 746 352 beneficiaries.

He says the government intends to increase benefits paid out by the fund and enable civil servants to sign up.

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Youth Wage Subsidy and the Spectre of a Two-tier Labour Market

Wednesday 14 April, 2010 - 11:08

The Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, placed the issue of a wage subsidy for young job seekers on the table in his recent budget speech. This is not a new proposal as it was tabled by his predecessor in one of his budget speeches.

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youth

unemployment

Helping informal traders to help themselves

Wednesday 18 November, 2009 - 11:10

South Africa’s poor have headed government’s call to do it for themselves in the spirit of vukuzenzele. To millions of people affected by poverty and unemployment, the most obvious option to ‘do it for yourself’ is to start small business initiatives such as selling fruits and vegetables, clothes, fast food at a street corner, and operating ‘spaza’ shops.

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unemployment

informal traders

We Are Here (Still)

We are here (still)
in this the last outpost
stuck in the dark with
folk believing (still) that
women belong at home

We are here (still)
all 50 or so million
in our seemingly different
and separate country apart
poles from one and all

We are here (still)
we with the native intelligence
of our parents and theirs before
sans the scraps of paper
certifying our daily worth

We are here (still)
in this very colony and that
along with the jobless poor

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Unemployment Blamed for Increase in Street Trading

Monday 3 August, 2009 - 10:05

As South Africa's unemployment lines keep growing in its first post-apartheid recession, Johannesburg's downtown sidewalks are increasingly crowded with street vendors hawking their wares. This is according to spokesperson for the Ecumenical Service for Socioeconomic Transformation, Thabo Koole.

Koole points out that, "Informal trading is seen as a sign of underdevelopment and primitive -- a sign of weakness."

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Progress Too Slow to Meet MDGs

Monday 6 July, 2009 - 16:07

The United Nations (UN) has warned that the global economic crisis will likely hamper efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which, in part, are already lagging behind the targets.

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5 Million Jobs

Jobs provide self-respect, independence and fulfillment. Productive work is the bedrock of democracy and human development. South Africa needs jobs: it needs them more urgently than ever, and it needs them in the kind of numbers we have never created before. Towards the end of 2008, the Centre for Development and Enterprise and Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) brought together some leading South Africans to think ‘out of the box’ about unemployment and creating a really large number of new jobs so that every South African who needs a job will be able to find one.

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Unemployment on the Decline - Stats SA

Friday 17 April, 2009 - 15:48

Amid a furore over the news of a decline in South Africa's unemployment rate to 21.9 percent, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) says that the lower rate is statistically correct.

Executive manager of Household Labour Market Statistics at Stats SA, Yandiswa Mpetsheni, points out that it is only construction growth of eight percent, 0.9 and 0.4 percent across the Quarterly Employment Statistics, Gross Domestic Product and quarter labour force survey that is statistically significant.