The latest unemployment figures once again confirm that South Africa is trapped in an economic growth crisis with devastating impacts for South Africans, especially young and black South Africans, hoping to find decent work.
Unless we are able to achieve a sustained economic growth rate of 5% to 6% per annum, South Africa will not able able to meaningfully reduce unemployment.
In the Q4: 2023 figures released by StatsSA, 32.1% of South Africans, or 7.9 million people, are without a job or proper income.
In terms of the expanded definition, which includes the people who have given up looking for jobs, unemployment decreased by 0.1% but still sits at a socially unsustainable 41.1% or 11.7 million people.
These statistics have human faces and empty stomachs behind them – millions of them.
Despite the moderate, and ad hoc, positive changes over the years, the data shows that over the last decade the number of unemployed has steadily increased, adding vulnerable people to this number every single day.
The unemployment rate among black Africans (36.1%) remains higher than the national average and has also been consistently higher than other population groups over the past 10-year period.
There is also a disproportionate burden on the youth, with a reported increase of 0.9% in the youth unemployment rate from 43.4% in Q3: 2023 to 44.3% in Q4: 2023.
To achieve the rate of economic growth that will begin to reduce unemployment we need to implement the basics for growth – investing in essential infrastructure such as electricity, freight transport, water and digital communications.
Today’s report by StatsSA yet again confirms the moral and legal duty of the state to provide basic income support to the millions of unemployed adults.
This support must replace the R350 per month Social Relief of Distress grant with a Basic Income Grant of at least R999 per month. This amount is affordable and would provide support that lies between the food poverty line and the lower bound poverty line.
There can be nothing more front line in service delivery than the payment of a cash transfer to the poor and unemployed.
* Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General and MP.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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