Year starts off with high job loss count

FOR thousands of South Africans, the beginning of this year spelt doom and gloom as the murky economic climate shed 36 290 jobs in January alone.

This is according to JSE listed workforce management group Adcorp’s employment index, which indicates the large majority of redundancies were for permanent employees, with 22 224 jobs lost, while 3 168 temporary staffers saw their contracts cut short.

Richards Bay has not been exempted from this hard-hitting reality.

Local industry giants like phosphates producer Foskor announced last week it had retrenched 30 staff from its acid division, while the world’s biggest miner BHP Billiton plans to close its Bayside smelter, leaving 450 people’s jobs hanging in the balance.

‘Significant job losses were observed in manufacturing (-4.7%) and construction (-9.9%),’ said Adcorp’s national survey.

‘Only high-skilled jobs were created during the month, being professionals (+4.7%) and management (+2.1%).’

According to the latest statistics from the KZN Provincial Treasury, the manufacturing and construction sectors within the province have also experienced a significant drop in terms of year-on-year performance.

For local construction, the index declined 10.7% year-on-year from 2012 to last year.

‘The index has been negative for the whole of 2013 and is still trying to overcome the general declining trend in the building sector,’ said economist Mike Schüssler.

‘Over the shorter term there does, however, seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel for construction.

‘Manufacturing in KwaZulu-Natal continues to struggle and the index was down 3.1% year-on-year.

Schüssler said most noticeable was the declines in food and beverages, petroleum and chemical products, which led to the drop in the overall manufacturing index.

‘Manufacturing will take a while to come back, not only in KwaZulu-Natal, but countrywide as the sector grew 0.3% nationally,’ he said.