Statistics South Africa said on Thursday it would collect second quarter data for its labour force survey over the phone, due to restrictions on face-to-face collections imposed by a nationwide lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a statement, statistician-general Risenga Maluleke said the continuous measuring of the economy was an important and necessary undertaking and would continue amid the health crisis.
"Statistics South Africa will continue providing the salient labour statistics for policy and evidence based decision making," he said.
The statistics agency said it had slightly modified the second quarter labour survey questionnaire for telephonic interviewing, with a few questions on Covid-19 added.
Unlike online Covid-19 surveys conducted by Stats SA which used convenience sampling and were therefore not representative of the entire population, the estimates from the labour force survey would represent the experience of all South Africans.
“We are appealing for cooperation and participation from all households sampled for the survey as the data will provide much-needed information on how Covid-19 has impacted employment in South Africa,” Maluleke said.
Stats SA said contact numbers for dwelling units in the sample were sourced from data for previous quarters.
It said there was a need to change the survey methodology slightly so that there was no rotation of dwelling units out of the sample until the situation with the pandemic improved.
"Some of our respondents were supposed to be in the sample for the last time in the previous quarter; we now plead with them to stay in the sample for a few more quarters to ensure that there is continuity in the production of the labour statistics that the country needs, especially during the crisis period, to assess its impact on the estimates," it said.