South Africa Joblessness Stays Near 15-Year High, Banks Add Jobs

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) South Africa’s unemployment rate remained near a 15-year high in the final quarter of 2018, even as the finance industry added more than 100,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate fell to 27.1 percent from 27.5 percent in the three months through September, Statistics South Africa said in report released Tuesday in the capital Pretoria. The median estimate of six economists surveyed by Bloomberg was 27.5 percent.

South African factory-output growth slowed in December as the production of petroleum products and chemicals declined.

Manufacturing production rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier, compared with a revised 1.3 percent in November, the Pretoria-based statistics office said Tuesday in a statement on its website. The median of 10 economists’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey was for expansion of 1.4 percent.

Key Insights

• The improvement in the rate may reflect an increase in temporary jobs over the festive season, particularly in the retail industry, said Mamello Matikinca, the chief economist at FirstRand Ltd.’s First National Bank unit, in a note before the data release.
• At 109,000, the finance industry added the most jobs while community and social services, which include the government, cut 51,000 positions.
• Africa’s most-industrialized economy hasn’t grown by more than 2 percent a year since 2013, stifling job creation. Economists, including Investec Bank Ltd.’s Kamilla Kaplan, say gross domestic product must expand by 3 percent to 5 percent annually for the unemployment rate to recede.
• President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged growth of as much as 5 percent a year in his campaign for leadership of the ruling African National Congress. He used his state-of-the-nation-address last week to highlight deals brokered at a presidential jobs summit, which could create 275,000 jobs a year, and plans to focus on policies in labor intensive sectors.
• The South African Reserve Bank said the economy probably grew by 0.7 percent in 2018 after emerging from a recession in the third quarter.

• Manufacturing accounts for about 13 percent of gross domestic product and the slower growth in the sector could weigh on the economy’s recovery in the fourth quarter.
• Production was constrained by declines in the output of petroleum products and basic iron and steel. The biggest contributions to growth came from food and beverages, vehicles and parts, and glass- and non-metallic products.
• Output rose 0.7 percent in the month.

Source: Bloomberg Business News