The latest Adcorp Employment Index, reflecting the country's employment status for the month of March, shows that employment declined at an annualised rate of 2.1% and saw the economy shed 33,202 jobs.
Labour market economist at Adcorp, Loane Sharp, says these losses took place mostly in the permanent, full-time work sector and were largely focused in retail and wholesale trade and manufacturing. These two sectors lost 9,000 and 8,000 jobs respectively, while employment in the formal sector fell by 39,812.
This month's Index also reports that for the first time in 15 years South Africa's economy shed 12,000 high-skilled jobs during March alone, alongside 16,000 low-skilled jobs.
"These perturbing job numbers cut right across the employment sector and are coupled with worrying trends in terms of both unfilled vacancies for skilled people in South Africa's private sector (829,000 in 2012) and unemployed graduates which have now topped at 580,000," says Sharp.
"There is clearly a complete disconnect between our public post-school education system, made up of universities, universities of technology and Further Education and Training (FET) colleges, and the demands of the workplace. There is no interface between our tertiary education and training system and the nature and composition of the country's skills shortages."
"We can only ask what has become of the various national skills development programmes that were devised in the mid-1990s, with the National Skills Development Framework being one of the keystone initiatives."
By way of examples Sharp cites the National Skills Fund which has failed to spend R6.5bn of the contributions collected for skills development.
In addition, following huge investments in the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) post-1994, Sharp says the national focus has shifted away from the 27 SETAs to the 50 public FET colleges.
"The SETAs, at least, were based on a realistic philosophy of individual sectors having sector-specific training requirements, and of on-the-job training being the primary mode of relevant workplace learning. The FET colleges possess none of these advantages, yet they are fast-becoming the primary mode of skills development."
The Index goes on to propose that to boost employment the economy must be stimulated and labour regulations must be relaxed.
"Our modelling suggests that, at an economic growth rate of 4%, the South African economy will absorb all new entrants into the labour market each year; and at an economic growth rate of 8%, the economy will reduce official unemployment to single digits by 2017.
"With a targeted relaxation of labour laws - related simply to dismissal protections and collective bargaining - all those who are willing to work will find it in the formal sector."
Adcorp also moots that the absence of a single agency that both houses accurate information about South Africa's 5.6 million business enterprises and 19.4 million workers and informs government's decisions about skills development goals is exacerbating the disjointed nature of the country's skills development strategy.
The Adcorp Employment Index for March 2013 also reports that government employment remained strong, with 4,000 jobs created during March, while the informal sector created 6,610 jobs during the month. It says mid-level skilled jobs were flat during the month.
Adds Sharp: "The relaxation of South Africa's increasingly restrictive immigration laws provides a practical means of supplementing the limited availability of skills in the short term, yet the continued passage of immigration laws further compromises the country's economic growth potential."
