[imagesource: Getty]

Jobs are in high demand in South Africa, and even more so now that the pandemic has kicked the economy half to death.

Career Junction recently published its up-to-date jobs index, with some interesting insight into which skills are most in-demand in the country right now.

Most of the sought-after skills require some form of tertiary education which excludes a significant portion of the population.

In today’s breaking news, Stats SA has released the results of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, which uses a household-based sample survey and collects data on labour market activities of people aged 15 years to 64 years of age in South Africa.

Let’s jump right in and start with the bad news, via EWN.

The labour force survey indicates that we lost around 2,2 million jobs in the second quarter.

Here’s a breakdown by sector:

At the same time, the official unemployment rate decreased from 30,1% in the first quarter of 2020 to a record low of 23,3%.

There’s a caveat to that, before we continue. Below via Moneyweb:

This is due to the official definition excluding unemployed people who are not actively looking for a job. The extended definition, which includes these people, rose from 39.7% to 42%.

Back to the data from Stats SA:

The data shows 4,3 million people are currently unemployed (according to the data provided), which is 2,8 million fewer than in the first quarter.

Again, a caveat to that drop:

[Risenga Maluleke, Statistician-General and Head of Stats SA] explains that those who moved out of the employed, unemployed and discouraged work seekers moved into the category of not economically active for reasons other than discouragement, which increased by 5,6 million between the second quarter.

“The official unemployment rate is calculated using the number of persons who are employed and unemployed, and does not include discouraged work seekers,” Maluleke said.

If we break it down by province, it looks like this:

It’s important to note that due to the extended lockdown, the data must be taken with a pinch of salt. The data from the period of review could have been impacted by the hard lockdown that went into effect in March, and fears from job seekers who are worried that they will contract COVID-19.

For now, the stats are interesting, but a more comprehensive survey could be needed to really get a handle on things.

Let’s finish with a run through the stats via eNCA, which also unpacks that apparent drop in unemployment percentages:

[sources:ewn&moneyweb]