The surprise 3.3% jump in economic growth during the second quarter of the year has proven to be a mirage for workers — 67,000 jobs were lost in the formal sector during the period, data from Statistics South Africa showed on Friday. Mechanisation in the mining sector and cost-cutting across industries in a weak economy were likely to blame for the job losses, said statistician general Pali Lehohla, who presented the quarterly employment statistics in Pretoria. These statistics measure changes in employment across all sectors in the formal economy, excluding agriculture, and are based on data collected from VAT - registered businesses. The quarterly labour force survey, which measures employment in the whole economy, showed the unemployment rate was 26.6% in the second quarter. This means 5.6 million people were unemployed. The expanded unemployment rate, which includes people who have given up looking for work, was 36.4%. “The job losses that we see here [mean] the economic conditi...
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