Mining job losses do not bode well for SA's unemployment rate

According to BDLive, the SA mining sector shed 15,000 jobs in the third quarter, reflecting the extent to which the slowdown in global demand for commodities, coupled with disruptive wildcat strikes, had on the sector, a Statistics South Africa jobs survey released on Tuesday, 11 Dece,ber 2012, showed.

The job losses in mining do not bode well for South Africa's already high unemployment rate of 25.5%. But the September Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES) survey showed that the overall formal non-agricultural sector added 10,000 jobs in the third quarter. This brought the number of jobs in the sector to 8.44-million.

Although most of the violent mining sector strikes happened in August, their effects are still being felt. This is evident in various economic data, the latest being the 7.7% decline in mining production in October compared with that month last year. In September, mining output fell 7.2% against the corresponding period last year, BDLive says.

Read the full article on www.bdlive.co.za.