50 000 miners lose jobs
THE mining industry shed almost 50 000 jobs from 2012 to 2015, most of which were in the gold and platinum sectors, Statistics SA said in the Mining Industry 2015 report.
Since 2015, job losses have continued in the sector, which contributed 7.3% of the country’s GDP in 2016. Preliminary figures from the Chamber of Mines show 457 698 people were employed in mining in 2016.
Although the total income – which reflects commodity prices and exchange rates, not volumes – earned by SA’s mining industry rose 6.6% or 2.2% a year in the four years to R419.5-billion, average salaries and wages rose by 7.5% a year or 24%, an unsustainable trend that helps to explain the decline in employment numbers.
Henk Langenhoven, chief economist at the Chamber of Mines, said 2015 was an unusual year for the industry since the sector was at the bottom of the commodity price decline curve. As it was also a year of recovery from the 2014 platinum sector strike, production and sales were better than average over the 2012-15 period. Taking inflation into account, the industry’s production and sales were 2% lower in 2012 than 2015, Langenhoven said.
According to Stats SA, out of 490 146 people employed in mining in 2015, 198 951 were in the platinum group metals (PGM) sector.
Gold mining was the second-biggest employer, at 104 369, followed by coal mining at 97 952 employees.
In 2015, the average salary for workers in the iron-ore industry, which was the best-paid outside the mining services sector, was R38 490 a month.
The lowest salaries were earned in salt mining, at R7 246 a month, but this was also the sector that employed the fewest people, 483.
The average salary paid in the PGM sector, in which mines around Rustenburg were paralysed by a five-month strike in 2014, was R17 649 a month by 2015. From 2012 to 2015, salaries in the PGM sector rose by 37%.
Although labour costs account for the greatest proportion of mining operating costs, the industry has also faced steep increases in other costs in recent years, particularly electricity tariffs. Mpumalanga earned the most of all provinces from sales of goods to the mining industry in 2015, at 28.8% of the total or R114.4billion. — BDLive