January lockdown hits jobs

The number of employed people fell again at the start of 2021 as SA’s second wave of coronavirus infections and the associated lockdown shrunk job opportunities across all age groups.

While 55% of survey respondents in the National Income Dynamics Study — Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDSCRAM) study — were employed between October 2020 and January 2021, this fell to 52% over the period covered by the latest wave, which included February and March.

Alcohol sales were banned from the end of December to the beginning of February and restrictions on movement and gatherings were imposed.

The NIDS-CRAM survey is notable for the extent of churn it reflects in the labour market, with a significant portion of people moving in and out of employment and about one fifth of those employed in October not employed in January and about a fifth of those not employed in October finding work in January.

While the rates of finding a job were similar across age groups, young people and women were more adversely affected by job losses. Job losses for youth were almost twice that of middle-aged adults.

Over the period of the pandemic, only 70% of women who were employed at the start remained employed in January 2021. For men, this figure was 78%. Of women who started out not employed, 19% had employment in January 2021 while the comparative figure for men was 31%. Women were more likely to have jobs in sectors that were hardest hit by the crisis, said the researchers.

The NIDS-CRAM survey tracks the incomes of a sample of South Africans over time, asking, among other things, about the employment status of respondents.

The quarterly labour force survey conducted by Stats SA is the most widely used indicator of employment.

The last survey, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2020, showed SA’s unemployment rate at 32.5%, the highest rate ever recorded by the survey.