Thomas Johnson - The Blog

Politicians take credit for the good news they're not responsible for, but don't take blame when they are.  So it is that periodically the DA takes credit for the Western Cape having a lower unemployment rate than SA as a whole https://www.da.org.za/2024/05/western-cape-and-cape-town-have-the-best-jobs-and-service-delivery-record-in-south-africa-statssa. Misinterpreting the job data, they take credit for the number of employed persons that increased between their arbitrary reference periods (I suspect cherry picking when the data is favourable). They claim they are responsible for "new jobs" being "created" (https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/western-cape-stats-sa-quarterly-labour-force-survey-30-oct-2018) and the province's or Cape Town's "upward economic trajectory" and so on.  These claims are unprovable, specious and even false. At best it's a chronic misunderstanding of how the economy works, which SA's politicians don...

South Africa's unemployment rate is catastrophic, 42%. The official rate is 32%, the remainder being discouraged jobseekers having given up looking for work (because there is none) and, by definition, not unemployed. Unemployment, though, is not discussed for the disaster it is but treated as a meme or political point scoring or as a consequence of growth. There is a direct link between unemployment and poverty but these are discussed as separate things. So when this month Tim Cohen wrote in his Daily Maverick column "Are we ready for a big debate about SA's unemployment rate?", I was encouraged. Instead, I was disappointed. His effort was worse than no discussion at all. His opening sentence "South Africa’s unemployment rate, the highest in the world, … blah, blah blah [is] worrying, irritating, demeaning and, I’m willing to bet, totally wrong [sic]" stated his intention to debunk the facts. Cohen's argument, if one can call it that - not an original on...