Stats SA reports that the country’s unemployment rate rose to 32.6% in the first quarter of 2021 – the highest it has been in 13 years. When including discouraged job seekers, the rate now sits at 43.2%. There are currently 11.4 million unemployed South Africans.
With a snail’s pace Covid-19 vaccine programme, and little in terms of the kind of radical structural reform needed, these devastating facts should not surprise us. Indeed, were government to continue down the current path of increased control and bureaucracy, we would see yet more job-shedding in the future.
