BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – It looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel for Government in its quest to fight unemployment in the country, especially among the youth.
The rate of unemployment among the youth in the country has decreased by 2.2 percent in a space of two years, from 58.2 percent to 56 percent. This was reavealed by Minister for Labour and Social Security Phila Buthelezi today when he presented a report on the Labour Force Survey of 2023.
The 2023 report preceded a report that was done in 2021. Buthelezi shared another positive, which was to the effect that the absorption rate (Employment-to-population ratio) has increased from 30.6 percent to 32.8 percent, which was a sign that the country’s economy was somehow improving.
The Minister also shared that in terms of employment creation, the country yielded some positive results, as the employed population increased from 241 933 to 260 356. “Economic sectors that contributed to this increase of employment included agriculture, construction, manufacturing, transport and financial and insurance activities, just to name a few,” Minister Buthelezi said.
Unfortunately, this increase is in the informal sector hence there was a drastic decreased in the formal sector of about 14.2 percent, according to Buthelezi.
However, Govenrment still has a lot of work in its effort to alleviate unemployment in general. The rate of unemployment has increased by 2.1 in the last two years. “As we speak, the unemployment rate has increased by 2.1 percentage point rising to 35.4 percent. In terms of sex, females have the highest unemployment rate of 37.6 percent while males have 33.1 percent,” Minister Buthelezi said.
Shiselweni region has the highest youth unemployment rate of 71percent. However, the proportion of youth not in employment, not in education and not in training has increased from 35 percent to 36.7 percent.
The Minister acknowledged that the country’s labour market was at crisis and there was a need to get the economy working again and reverse the gloomy picture that seemed to lie ahead. “To give you some highlights, working age population increased from 790,862 to 793, 614 leading to an increase to the labour force participation rate hence a decline to those who are out of labour force,” he said. He noted though that it was better to be in the labour force than to be out of labour force.
Buthelezi thanked the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the Central Bank of Eswatini (CBE), the Eswatini Tourism Authority (ETA) and all individual living in Eswatini who took time to respond to the questionnaires and thank the officers that conducted the survey.
The Minister was concerned that the Labour Force Survey of 2023 was done two years after the one of 2021. He said his Ministry was working on changing that, so that the survey could be done yearly. The Minister highlighted that in developed countries, such surveys were done monthly and this helped because the information gathered from such exercises was timely. Such information helped Government and other organisations to efficiently and effectively allocate their resources in order to improve lives of the people they are responsible for, according to the Minister.
