Ramaphosa's Big Job Creation Lie

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assertion that 1.5 million jobs have been generated since 2021 is false, since South Africans currently have less jobs than they did two years ago.

Ramaphosa stated in his 2023 State of the Nation Address (SONA), “between the third quarters of 2021 and 2022, around one and a half million new jobs were created in our economy”.

Looking at the number of employed people in South Africa since 2017 demonstrates, however, that the president’s assertion conceals vital facts.

The most notable finding is that the number of employed people is still much lower than it was before Covid. It is lower than it was in 2017.

According to the data, South Africa has lost a considerable number of employment in the previous three years, which was not addressed in the SONA.

It is inaccurate to claim that 1.5 million jobs have been generated since 2021, because these employment were lost in 2020 and have only been reclaimed.

Even more interesting is that South Africa outperformed other developing market countries with high jobless rates.

Apart from South Africa, Greece, Brazil, and Columbia have the highest unemployment rates on the MSCI emerging markets index.

In terms of employment, all of these nations have attained pre-pandemic levels. Greece and Brazil have substantially outperformed their pre-Covid levels.

South Africa is drastically failing in terms of employment, both historically and in comparison.

Dawie Roodt, chief economist of Efficient Group, warned that South Africans are wasting their time listening to the 2023 SONA.

He said that the ANC is fumbling from one crisis to the next and that what occurs in fact is very different from what the president says.

He said that, while unemployment has improved considerably, it remains at extraordinarily high levels.

“The South African economy has made no progress, and the current government does not have the capacity and the will to implement the policies that would grow the economy,” he said.