In the face of catastrophic employment figures, President Cyril Ramaphosa has once again pledged that structural reform will be implemented to get the country onto a growth and employment-generating path.
Stats SA’s employment data for the second quarter of 2020 showed that some 2.2 million jobs had been lost. Although the unemployment rate had declined from 30.1% to 23.3%, this was a function of changes in the overall operation of the labour market. For example, fewer people were looking for jobs.
Structural reforms along with investment in infrastructure and other interventions would push up growth and job creation, the president said.
‘Our success in responding to this unprecedented crisis will be measured by the speed of our labour market recovery,’ he said.
‘In addition to the relief measures we have already implemented, we must ensure that every job lost during the crisis is replaced and that more jobs are created so that we can meaningfully reduce unemployment,’ he added.
Unemployment and the failure to generate large numbers of jobs have been the Achilles heel of South Africa’s economy for decades. The ANC ascended to power in 1994 promising – among many other things – ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’, but these have not materialised on a scale sufficient to deal with the country’s extreme unemployment crisis.