Image: Investopedia
Faizel Patel – 25/08/2021
The Democratic Alliance (DA) says South Africa’s new record high unemployment rate is a recipe for social and economic disaster.
The party’s shadow minister for employment and labour Dr Michael Cardo was speaking to Radio Islam about Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter.
The data revealed that the unemployment rate had increased to 34.4% in the second quarter for 2021 from 32.6% in the first quarter.
This is the highest unemployment rate recorded since the survey started in 2008.
Dr Cardo says the unemployment rate must addressed by government.
“According to Bloomberg, this is the highest unemployment rate in the world. This is a recipe for social and economic disaster unless measures are put in place by the government to make job creation its number one policy priority.”
He says the unemployment rate in the country is not intractable.
“I would very much discourage the notion that started to take hold in some quarters that unemployment in South Africa is intractable. In other words, it’s such a deep-seated problem that you are never going to find a solution to that. That’s not true, we know from worldwide experience that when the economy grows fast enough and you are bringing investments into the economic space, then job creation does follow.”
Dr Cardo says jobs are the best form of social security and government needs to do everything in its legislative and regulatory powers power to make sure it can create an environment that is conducive for the private sector to grow jobs.
Listen to the interview with Dr Michael Cardo
0 Comments