Western Cape’s added jobs a result of ‘reduced incidents and duration’ of load shedding

The Democratic Alliance is celebrating because, it says, 167 000 of the 169 000 new jobs created in the fourth quarter of last year were in the Western Cape – a province it controls.

The Western Cape recorded the biggest quarter to quarter change in employment with an increase of 167 000 or 6.9%.

In the North West, 23 000 new jobs were created, in the Eastern Cape 20 000 and in the Northern Cape 12 000. But employment losses recorded, included 20 000 in Limpopo, 18 000 in Gauteng, 13 000 in Mpumalanga and 3 000 in the Free State in the same period.

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Overall, according to Statistics South Africa, there was a slight decrease in the country’s official unemployment rate, easing marginally to 32.7% from the previous quarter’s 32.9%.

Exemplary net job creation

Independent economic analyst professor Bonke Dumisa said it was important to unreservedly congratulate Western Cape on achieving the exemplary net job creation.

Dumisa said Gauteng and other big provinces were also losing jobs for a variety of reasons, many of which were not necessarily within their control.

“Gauteng lost many jobs because of Eskom’s load shedding, because load shedding is the hardest and harshest in Gauteng,” he said.

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“The Western Cape has been partly successful in reducing the incidents and duration of Eskom’s load shedding in many parts of the province, while theoretically adhering to the Eskom’s national load shedding schedule. But in Gauteng this is not the case,” Dumisa said.

“Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal had more electricity outages due to higher electricity demand.”

Dumisa said the Western Cape also benefited significantly from seasonality in the fourth quarter of the year. That is the time the province employs more people in the very productive agricultural sector for harvesting.

“The Western Cape is now becoming a major national tourist destination, which creates more capacity for creating more jobs,” he added.

Agricultural sector

Antswisa Transaction Advisory chief economist Miyelani Mkhabela said the agricultural sector was the base of every resilient economy.

Food security was a great pillar to manage price stability and the primary agricultural statistics highlighted positive activity as the fourth quarter of 2022 recorded 860 000 people employed in agriculture – about 80 000 people more than in the past quarters.

“South Africa’s agricultural sector portrayed recovery in both primary agricultural output and investment in agricultural equipment,” he said.

Mkhabela said South Africa’s mining and manufacturing output were driven by energy security. However, the jobs figures showed how bad unemployment in South Africa is, with 61% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 and 39.9% of people between the ages of 25 and 34 years unemployed.

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Economic research group Oxford Economics Africa said South Africa’s unemployment rate is decreasing at a sluggish pace. The weakened economic growth outlook also bodes ill for future employment growth and the high youth unemployment rate highlights the unemployment crisis.

“The latest jobs report offers some good news but does not detract from South Africa’s skyhigh unemployment rate, which has consistently remained above 20% for more than two decades now,” Mkhabela said.

“What’s more, concerns about weak economic growth over the medium-term risk and the unemployment rate becoming entrenched at current lofty levels.”

Written by Lunga Simelane and Ina Opperman

– lungas@citizen.co.za and inao@citizen.co.za