* Economic growth not sufficient to dent unemployment
* New jobs in trade, social services, manufacturing
(Adds details, comment, background)
PRETORIA Feb 7 (Reuters) – South Africa’s official
jobless rate eased to 23.9 percent of the labour force in the
fourth quarter of 2011 from 25.0 percent in the third as new
jobs were added in the trade, social services and manufacturing
sectors, a survey showed on Tuesday.
But growth in Africa’s largest economy still remains far
below the levels needed to make a significant dent on
unemployment, one of the biggest challenges for President Jacob
Zuma’s government.
In its latest quarterly Labour Force Survey, Statistics
South Africa said the total number of unemployed people stood at
4.244 million in the three months to December from 4.442 million
in the third quarter.
The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes
people who have stopped looking for work, also decreased by 0.6
percentage points to 35.4 percent.
“What we’ve seen is that over the year there’s been the hope
that the economy is recovering and we have seen that the year
2011 has created jobs because we’ve seen two successive quarters
of employment creation,” Kefiloe Masiteng, Deputy Director
General for Population and Social Statistics at the agency said.
The government has singled out job creation as one of its
main priorities but says the economy needs to grow at 7 percent
a year, more than double the current rate, to significantly
slash unemployment.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has said the economy will
probably grow slightly above the 2.5 percent predicted by the
IMF this year. This would be much lower than the 3.4 percent
growth forecast in October last year.
Continued…
