Latest jobs data calls for bold economic leadership, removal of legislative impediments and jobs summit
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Today's release of unemployment data by the Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2016 simply underlines the grave economic challenges South Africa is facing. According to Statistics SA (Statsa) employment declined by 0.8 %, which increases the pool of unemployed citizens to 15.5 million. Significantly, services, agriculture, mining and transport were the main sectors where jobs were lost. Manufacturing, private household and construction saw marginal gains, albeit at decreasing rate compared with the same period. The expanded unemployment rate now stands at 36,4 percent.
These figures come at the time when our economic growth is projected to grow at a zero rate, the spectre of a credit rating downgrade is looming larger than ever and great uncertainty surrounds our international economic situation.
These developments call for bold economic leadership to guide our country out of this economic morass. Nafcoc remains strongly convinced that the solution lies in supporting and growing the small, micro and medium enterprise (SMME) sector by removing all legislative and financial impediments. In addition, training provided to young people in entrepreneurship and business skills must be intensified to mitigate the low absorption capacity of youth in our economy.
The government and in particular local government must resolutely follow pro-poor and pro-business policies. We are appalled that at this juncture there are some sections of businesses, which are still calling for the enforcement of anti-business and anti-poor bylaws whose sole intention is to penalise informal traders and hawkers, people who are just trying to earn an honest living. We urge the municipalities and the incoming councils to ignore these calls
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