AEI August 2011 

Salient features

• Employment declined at an annual rate of 0.4% during July, the third consecutive monthly decline. At an annual rate this represents a loss of 79,380 workers during the month, or 270,504 permanent and 18,180 temporary
  workers. (The balance is made up of unofficial jobs, which increased by 191,124 during July, reinforcing a trend that has been in evidence since January 2000.)
• Employment declined most sharply in the mining (7.7%) and manufacturing 8.6%) sectors, despite sharply rising export prices for commodities and basic beneficiated manufactured products.
• Government employment continued to rise (1.4%), with the public sector now accounting for all the job creation in the economy for 2011 as a whole.
• Our analysis of South African trade unions indicates that membership has declined from 4.3 million in 2000 to 3.2 million in 2010 – which trend is out of sync with the continuing surge in strikes and work stoppages reported so
  far this year. We estimate that, in 2011 and 2012, the South African economy will shed 468,192 jobs – or half as much again as was shed during the recent recession.

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