Slow employment growth meant that around one in four people in the labour force remain unemployed, the South African Reserve Bank said in its latest quarterly bulletin.

“Employment growth in the private sector continued to disappoint over the past year, consistent with the lacklustre pace of economic expansion,” the central bank said.

Slow economic growth of only 1.5% in 2014 meant that enterprise-surveyed employment in the formal non-agricultural sector expanded by only 0.8% over the four quarters to the fourth quarter of 2014. This was boosted by a 3.3% rise in public sector employment, but no change in private sector employment.

The cumulative job losses in the private sector between the fourth quarter 2008, the onset of the recession, and the fourth quarter 2014 amounted to 338 500, whereas the public sector added 336 800 jobs over the same period. Over this period the working age (15 to 64 years old) population expanded by more than 4-million people.

Despite the high unemployment rate of nearly 25%, workers were still able to achieve above inflation wage gains with the average wage settlement rate in collective bargaining agreements at 8.1% in 2014 compared with 7.9% in 2013. This was well above the average consumer inflation rate of 6.1% in 2014. The central bank noted that growth in nominal unit labour cost in the formal non-agricultural sector of the economy exceeded the upper limit of the inflation target range.

According to Andrew Levy Employment Publications, the number of workdays lost due to industrial action rose to 11.8-million in 2014 compared with only 5.2-million in 2013. This was mainly due to prolonged strike action in the platinum mining sector. The only two years in which more workdays were lost due to industrial action were 2007 and 2010, both of which experienced large public-sector strikes.