Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Labour and Employment says it will have to further interrogate the quarterly labour force survey by Statistics South Africa on unemployment to understand its authenticity and the method used to arrive in its findings.
Last month, StatsSA issued its quarterly labour force survey for the three months to June, revealing that the number of employed persons has decreased by 2.2 million to 14.1 in quarter 2 of 2020 compared to quarter 1 of the same year.
This was described as the unprecedented decline from quarter one to quarter two since the start of the survey in 2018.
Chairperson of the committee Lindelwa Dunjwa says there are a number of discrepancies between the survey compared to that of the department of Labour along with its entities on issues of employment.
“I wouldn’t categorise it as a committee not trusting your work. But the panic is that on the ground while we are then receiving from the department of labour and employment and its entities in terms of the challenges of unemployment needs us to panic, and we then thought statistics SA will make us more empowered and more clarified, but the question in my view, are questions bothering into not trusting the information.”
In the video below, the Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke is interviewed on latest unemployment stats:
VIDEO: SA 2020 Q2 Unemployment rate by province:
