The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says the country’s unemployment rate is alarming. The labour federation was reacting to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, which shows the official unemployment rate has risen to 33.6%.
Data indicates that an additional 345 000 persons are unemployed.
Cosatu’s Parliamentary Coordinator Matthew Parks says these figures are more than just statistics and its only getting worse.
“It’s a crisis and I think for far too long, we’ve allowed ourselves to normalize it. We have a crisis of 43% unemployment. It’s been increasing continuously for much of the past decade. And in fact, it’s doubled since over the last 20 years. For young people, it’s even worse it’s over 62%.”
“So you have 12 million people who just can’t find work. About five million of them are young people. This creates a real crisis for them. We’re in danger of creating a permanent class of unemployed persons,” adds Parks.
VIDEO | Unemployment Rate | Unemployment crisis in SA continues:
Cosatu adds that although the increase in the unemployment rate is not unexpected, government should not normalise the crisis.
Parks says the decrease in those employed creates further strain for those who are working due to the amount of people depending on one source of income.
“It also creates a crisis for those 17 million people who do have jobs because the money, the very medial wages are stretched even further trying to support unemployed relatives. And to be fair, look, this is not unexpected, given the war in the Middle East, and in fact, the massive spike in international oil prices.”
“What we’ve seen in South Africa, fuel prices skyrocketing with petrol up by 25%, diesel by 50%. But what we can’t continue to do is just to ignore this crisis,” explains Parks.
Audio file below is reporting more on the story:
