Cosatu welcomes decline in unemployment rate

Oscar Thomas
11 February 2015

The Congress of South African Trade Union has welcomed the slight drop in the unemployment rate.

Statistics South Africa released its report for the fourth quarter which revealed that the unemployment rate had declined from 25.4 % to 24.3 % in the third quarter of 2014. 

However the union says these figures may not reflect a long-term trend and Cosatu’s National Spokesperson Patrick Craven explains why this is so.

Craven said one is that in the fourth quarter of every year there are a lot temporary or casual jobs created in the run up to holiday season and the run up on farms in the summer period.

Craven said these jobs may not still even be there and secondly our rate of economic growth is still too slow to maintain that kind of production in unemployment.

Craven said Thirdly of course these figures cover the period before we started load shedding and while nobody knows for certain what that effect will have on our economy it seems highly unlikely that jobs will be lost as a result of it.

Meanwhile the union said while any drop in unemployment is good it is too early to celebrate as economic growth in the country is slow, therefore it is unable to create jobs that are needed for the current economy. 

Statistics South Africa also revealed that 4.9 million people are officially unemployed in South Africa. 

“We shouldn’t drop our guard and push ahead even more strongly with expansionist economic policies which will create jobs as that is what we want and are hoping to hear from the President as it is still a huge national crisis” Craven added.