About half of all the jobs created during the past 15 months were in the public sector, Treasury said in its 2011 medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS), tabled in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
“Government is the country’s largest employer and has supported the labour market during the recovery,” the document says.
“About half of all jobs created over the past 15 months were in the public sector.”
The document says provincial government accounts for about three-fifths of public-sector jobs, mainly in education and health, national government and local government.
The document says public-sector hiring needs to support efficient and productive use of resources focused on frontline delivery, and avoid raising staff levels “that do not contribute to these objectives”.
The expanded public works programme contributes to poverty alleviation through the creation of short- and longer-term jobs, the document says.
Funding of the programme across national, provincial and local government amounts to R73 billion over the medium term.
The infrastructure sector holds the greatest potential for job creation, but incomplete data provision and a lack of specialised capacity to design labour-intensive projects in provinces and municipalities have led to underperformance.
The recently-established community work programme, which guarantees two days of work per week, will be expanded to about 250 000 participants by 2014/15.
According to the document, the labour market remains sluggish.
It says while output has risen by 6.2 percent over the past two years, formal sector non-agricultural employment is just 2.6
percent higher than its low in March 2010.
Unemployment increased from 21.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008, to 25.7 percent in the second quarter of 2011. The figure did not capture the estimated 2.2 million workers who have stopped looking for work.
Formal sector non-agricultural job creation has been concentrated in government.
Finance, real estate and business services, retail and wholesale trade, and mining have created net employment over the last year. Net job creation also occurred in construction during the first half of 2011.
Job creation has been particularly weak for young people and the less skilled.
Despite tepid demand for labour, nominal wage settlements averaged 7.7 percent in the first nine months of 2011, compared to 8.2 percent in 2010 as a whole.
Real wage settlements increased by 3.1 per-cent in 2011, following a 3.9 percent increase in 2010. - Sapa