The formal employment percentage in the second quarter of 2018 in South Africa has declined of over 69 000, bringing the total number of people employed in the formal non-agricultural sector of South Africa to 9 748 000.
A Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES) survey done by Statistics South Africa shows a significant decrease in the overall employment rate in South Africa.
A staggering 67 000 jobs were shed in the community service industry, 2 000 in the mining industry, 13 000 in the manufacturing industry and 2 000 in the transport industry.
Some gains were made in the trade and business service industries with the addition of 7 000 jobs each, followed by the construction industry with a slight increase of roughly 1 000 jobs.
The job level in the electricity industry remained unchanged.
Year-on-year, formal sector jobs rose by 13 000 in the second quarter of 2018 compared with the same period of 2017.
There was, however, a decrease of R5-billion in gross earnings from the previous quarter. A total of R 627- billion earnings were paid for the latest quarter, with decreases in earning being led by the business services industry at R12-billion, followed by the mining industry with R699-million.
Increases in earnings were achieved in the community services industry with R3.5-billion, the transport industry with R2.3-billion; construction industry with R1.1-billion; manufacturing industry with R570-million; trade industry with R307-million; and the electricity industry with R94-million.
Average monthly earnings were at R20 176 in the formal non-agricultural sector of the economy in May 2018. This is an increase of 1,6% compared with February 2018.
A year-on-year increase of 3.7% was made from R19 444 in May 2017 to R20 176 in May this year.
There was a year-on-year rise in gross earnings by 4.5% from R600-billion in the June 2017 quarter to R627-billion in the June 2018 quarter.
Pictures: StatsSA/Unsplash
