South Africa’s mining and manufacturing sectors shed up to 15 000 jobs in December, but overall employment figures across all sectors grew by 12 556 jobs, according to the latest Adcorp Employment Index, released on Thursday.

The strongest employment growth was observed in transport (12.7%), wholesale and retail trade (3.4%) and construction (4.7%).

The tertiary sectors – primarily services – gained 17 000 jobs.

Adcorp stated that the unofficial sector – that part of the economy that is not captured by official statistics – grew strongly, creating 9 024 jobs during December.

Further, it added that the domestic economy had added 125 029 jobs in the last four months of 2012.

“The broad statistics, while positive, nevertheless obscure the negative permanent jobs picture, where employment declined by 5 542, whereas temporary jobs increased by 9 074 during the month,” Adcorp stated.

It added that, between 2000 and 2012, the number of permanent jobs in South Africa declined by 1.9-million, while the number of temporary jobs increased by 2.6-million during the same period.

Temporary jobs currently account for 30.5% of all jobs in South Africa – up from 11% in 2000.

“The growing substitution of temporary for permanent jobs was a striking feature of the local labour market over the last decade,” said Adcorp labour market analyst Loane Sharp.

He indicated that permanent work had not yet started to increase following the 2009 economic downturn, while this trend was barely evident in the secular increase in temporary work.

Sharp ascribed the long-term increase in temporary work to several factors, including variable or unpredictable sales volumes and the growing effect of seasonality on output levels in agriculture, retail trade, tourism, catering, logistics and other sectors.

“In addition, employers increasingly view labour costs – such as employee administration and other human resource practices – as noncore activities, preferring to outsource these activities to specialised third parties,” he said.

Sharp added that such outsourcing was also driven by a desire by employers to reduce their exposure to the regulatory risks in South Africa’s ‘onerous’ labour legislation.