The jobs reckoning is here: 3-million jobs lost
The Nids-Cram survey suggests Covid-19 has had a much greater impact on employment than expected: an estimated 3-million jobs lost, and 1.5-million employees furloughed. The jobs bloodbath traces the contours of inequality in SA and has important implications for hunger among the country’s poorer people
The coronavirus pandemic is the largest social and economic shock in our lifetime. It has fundamentally interrupted everything we do and worsened problems such as poverty, inequality and unemployment. The collateral damage of this one virus has been profound and will be with us for the next 10 years, if not longer.
Though the SA government acted swiftly and decisively to limit the spread of the virus, implementing a nationwide lockdown within seven days, its mitigation measures have come at a high cost. Never before — or at least not in the past 50 years — have we seen so much damage in such a short time. This includes damage from the lockdown, the recession and the pandemic itself. But the true scale of job loss and hunger throughout SA is difficult to fathom...
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