{"id":7713,"date":"2012-02-07T13:47:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T11:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/02\/update-1-s-africas-q4-jobless-rate-falls-to-23-9-percent\/"},"modified":"2012-02-07T13:47:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T11:47:00","slug":"update-1-s-africas-q4-jobless-rate-falls-to-23-9-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/update-1-s-africas-q4-jobless-rate-falls-to-23-9-percent\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE 1-S.Africa&#8217;s Q4 jobless rate falls to 23.9 percent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Economic growth not sufficient to dent unemployment<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* New jobs in trade, social services, manufacturing<\/p>\n<p> (Adds details, comment, background)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">PRETORIA<\/span> Feb 7 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa&#8217;s official<br \/>\njobless rate eased to 23.9 percent of the labour force in the<br \/>\nfourth quarter of 2011 from 25.0 percent in the third as new<br \/>\njobs were added in the trade, social services and manufacturing<br \/>\nsectors, a survey showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But growth in Africa&#8217;s largest economy still remains far<br \/>\nbelow the levels needed to make a significant dent on<br \/>\nunemployment, one of the biggest challenges for President Jacob<br \/>\nZuma&#8217;s government.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In its latest quarterly Labour Force Survey, Statistics<br \/>\nSouth Africa said the total number of unemployed people stood at<br \/>\n4.244 million in the three months to December from 4.442 million<br \/>\nin the third quarter.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes<br \/>\npeople who have stopped looking for work, also decreased by 0.6<br \/>\npercentage points to 35.4 percent.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we&#8217;ve seen is that over the year there&#8217;s been the hope<br \/>\nthat the economy is recovering and we have seen that the year<br \/>\n2011 has created jobs because we&#8217;ve seen two successive quarters<br \/>\nof employment creation,&#8221; Kefiloe Masiteng, Deputy Director<br \/>\nGeneral for Population and Social Statistics at the agency said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The government has singled out job creation as one of its<br \/>\nmain priorities but says the economy needs to grow at 7 percent<br \/>\na year, more than double the current rate, to significantly<br \/>\nslash unemployment.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has said the economy will<br \/>\nprobably grow slightly above the 2.5 percent predicted by the<br \/>\nIMF this year. This would be much lower than the 3.4 percent<br \/>\ngrowth forecast in October last year.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* Economic growth not sufficient to dent unemployment * New jobs in trade, social services, manufacturing (Adds details, comment, background) PRETORIA Feb 7 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-7713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}