More people, more unemployment, more progress

The country’s unemployment rate was still rising because new jobs were not being created fast enough to keep pace with the growing number of young people entering the job market, the government said on Wednesday. Reuters reported that according to Statistics South Africa, the unemployment rate had reached 36.2 percent by 1999.

The report said the figure was based on a five-year study from 1995 to 1999, in which an “expanded” definition of jobless was used. It was the first time the government had estimated the jobless rate for 15 to 65-year-olds at that level, according to the report. The official jobless rate had risen to 23.5 percent from 15.7 percent in 1995, it said. “South Africa’s population has the typical pyramid structure for a developing market - there are a lot of young people who are unable to find jobs,” Statistics South Africa chief director of research and development, Ros Hirschowitz, was quoted saying.

However, said the report, the study showed there were wide discrepancies in the official jobless rate between different types of people - ranging from 35 percent for African women to 4.4 percent for white men. The wide-ranging study was based on estimates showing that the population grew from 40,6 million in October 1996 - when the first post-apartheid census was taken - to 43,3 million in October 1999, the report said. It showed that the percentage of Africans in the overall population had risen to 77.8 percent in 1999 from 77.1 percent in 1995. The percentage of people classified as white fell to 10.5 percent from 11.2 percent in 1995, although overall numbers also grew.

The report said that according to the study, by 1999 formal education was reaching 94 percent of children between the ages of seven and 15 years, the proportion of households living in formal dwellings crept up to 70 percent from 66 percent in 1995 and the number of people with access to clean piped water rose to 83 percent from 79 percent. The proportion of households with a telephone or mobile telephone rose to 35 percent from 29 percent, while the use of public health-care facilities increased to 69 percent from 67 percent over the same period, according to the study.