SA bleeding jobs: 95 000 lost in a year

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JIMMY MOYAHA: The latest Quarterly Employment Statistics Report was released today, suggesting that we have seen a dip in the employed number of individuals in the country. There has been a total employment decrease of 95 000 jobs between June 2025 and June 2026.

We are going to take a closer look at these numbers with the research and education officer at the International Labour and Research Information Group, Dr Dale McKinley. He joins us on the line to see what we make of this. Dr McKinley, lovely having you on the show. Thanks so much for taking the time.

The jobs conversation in South Africa is one that we have almost monthly. The latest data is not pointing to a very positive picture, especially when we look at youth numbers. But I want to get your thoughts as a starting point on the overall employment position of the country.

DR DALE MCKINLEY: Well, we have some serious structural problems. This is nothing new. And what these latest stats show us, and confirm, is that it’s not just in our domestic structural problems where our manufacturing sector is declining, but we’re in some serious global headwinds.

I think these last 12 months in particular have been exacerbated obviously by the war in Iran.

The prices of energy and fuel have affected a whole range of different things.

And if you look at the sectors where we lost most of the jobs – services, construction, even tourism went down:

You’ll see, I think, that this is a combination of our own inability to grasp the nature of the structural reforms needed.

But things that we don’t have control over are global trade and energy prices, which have basically increased the inability of investment in our country, and people holding on to money and not wanting to increase jobs at this stage.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Dr McKinley, I want to look at the 29 000 community-service jobs that have been created, or employment gains in that respect. And I want to get your thoughts around how we’re starting to see that shift in, as you allude to, certain sectors that are performing better than others. Certain sectors are perhaps under a bit more strain given some of the global conditions.

From South Africa’s specific story, we know that we have primary sectors that contribute a lot more towards things like economic growth – and those are the sectors we heavily rely on.

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We are seeing an increase in some areas, but is that in areas that would really make a significant difference – or does every bit count?

DR DALE MCKINLEY: Every bit counts. I think what our economists and particularly our [National] Treasury have failed to understand is that we cannot have an austerity budget.

We cannot have contractual sort of spending and then hope to deal with joblessness, hope to deal with increased employment, because then you rely completely on the private sector and foreign investment.

And right now, they’re not moving because of the unpredictability of things and certainly the headwinds, as I mentioned.

So, as you say, if we look at manufacturing, we look at business services, we look at trade, we look at transport – these are the key components of our economy that lost jobs in the last year. This is an overall trend that’s been generally happening over the last 15 to 20 years.

What that tells us is that we’re not investing in our domestic economy. We’re still relying on the ‘big boys’.

We’re still relying on lots of large-corporate big projects and foreign direct investment, which many economists are convinced are still the sort of ‘golden goose’, so to speak.

I think we’re missing the boat here – which is that if we invest and free up credit within the local economies, particularly [for] small and medium-scale enterprises, we can grow local economies. That simply hasn’t been the case and, as a result, we keep on having these cyclical downturns.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Dr McKinley, I want to look at the fact that part-time jobs were up quarter on quarter. That is quite positive, but alongside that positive, an equally glaring concern in the fact that youth unemployment currently sits – based on some of the definitions here, or definitions for the people aged 15 to 34 – at 47.4% of that demographic.

Almost 50% of that demographic is now unemployed. Five million people don’t have a job, and those are probably some of our most economically capable contributors.

DR DALE MCKINLEY: Absolutely. What this speaks to, Jimmy, is the fact that this is the skills mismatch in many cases.

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What we did 15, 20 years ago in the educational sector was to move away from technical skills, from the skills that were needed in a growing technological economy, particularly in terms of the youth.

We sent kids to university and [gave them] skills that often don’t match what the economic sectors need.

As a result, what you see, besides the structural issues that I mentioned, is this mismatch in relation to the employment possibilities for young people, and also a failure of investing in particular sectors – for example in tech sectors – that would allow for skills development.

This was something that we did fairly well, I think, within the first 10 or 15 years after 1994. But we have left that behind.

As a result youth unemployment continues to rise, simply because when youth come onto the job market, the spaces for them are not there, and we’re not investing in the sectors that would possibly create those sectors – or at least those possibilities.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Dr McKinley, I want to look at the concerns around the fact that we’re not creating enough new jobs, we’re not creating enough economic opportunity to be able to change the situation. How then do we deal with the situation and not have it spiral beyond this point?

You mentioned of course that the private sector and public sector sit on opposite ends of this at the moment, and we do need to find a way to actually move the economy forward.

We have had a stagnant economy for the longest of times. How then do we start to deal or take this sort of data and make use of it in the most optimal way?

DR DALE MCKINLEY: I think there’s a huge debate here about our macroeconomic framing. This has been a debate for the last 20, 25 years, which is if we orient our economy dominantly towards the global trade market and towards the needs of other countries – and if that’s what we rely on – then we’re going to be hostage to the winds that blow that we have no control over, and which we’ve seen the latest of.

Let’s take ArcelorMittal, for example, which just shed 4 000/5 000 jobs, affecting over 50 000 to 60 000 people if you take the families into consideration – simply in the Vaal region – as a result of global competition and tariff policies.

So if we’re going to be serious about increasing our domestic economy, there are three or four things that we need to do. I think this is where we have failed – and our Treasury and our government have failed – to grasp the nettle.

It is that you cannot grow an economy without spending money.

You simply cannot contract and cut services and say, well, this is sending the right notes to the credit agencies and to others, so it makes borrowing less [with] constantly increased interest rates in order to keep inflation low.

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What you’re doing therefore is you’re putting these barriers in the way of economy.

We need to be bold. We need to have a growth-oriented economy and not so much worry about debt levels to the extent that many of the economists are talking about.

The second thing is to invest in, as I mentioned, small and medium-scale enterprises.

If you look at the budgets over the last 15 to 20 years, the amount of money and the amount of training and skills development put into the local economy is minuscule compared to what we’re spending on other components of our economy. That’s where most people lie.

Look at these latest job statistics.

What was the greatest increase? It was in the informal economy – 45 000 or 50 000, I think, over the last year, 2026.

Now, that’s not necessarily to say that these are the kinds of jobs that we want, but basically [we need to] start investing in local economies, having longer-term plans for those, and making credit available to people.

It always amazes me that economists come and speak about growth, and they don’t understand that corporates don’t operate without credit lines.

You know, no business operates without having access to credit. How do they expect small and medium enterprises to do the same without those high borrowing costs?

So we need to free up a little more money. We need to invest in local economies. We need to stop relying so much on the foreign aspect of it, and also protect our local industries where necessary from unfair competition.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Local economies are the key here, especially as we look to address our ongoing unemployment crisis that we find ourselves confronted with.

We’ll have to leave the conversation on that note. Dr Dale McKinley of the International Labour and Research and Information Group joined us to take a look at the latest Quarterly Employment Survey Report that suggests that we have lost more employment opportunities over the last year.

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