Question NW848 to the Minister of Employment and Labour
11 April 2023 - NW848
Tambo, Mr S to ask the Minister of Employment and Labour
Whether he has been informed of the total number of jobs that have been lost in the Republic due to the ongoing energy crisis; if not, why not; if so, what (a) are the figures and (b) sectors of labour are affected the most?
Reply:
The honourable member should be aware that the Department of Employment and Labour is not the custodian of the production of official labour statistics in the country. The Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) and the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) are quarterly produced by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) and contain information on labour statistics.
However, the Department extracts and analyses labour statistics but the information is limited to what has been published. The total number of jobs that have been lost in the Republic by industry are provided and known but the survey questionnaires used by StatsSA does not cover the cause of jobs lost by industry.
In this context, there is probably no direct correlation between the ongoing energy crisis and the total number of jobs that have been lost using both survey data.
To the extent, researchers have reported a number of factors that could explain slow economic growth and low absorption rate in the country. These factors include electricity-load shedding, low investment, low savings, low international demand (low volume of exports) etc.