Ipelegeng boosts formal employment figures-CSO

Brian Benza
Staff Writer | Wednesday January 6, 2010 00:00

 

According to the  Central Statistics  Office (CSO)  employment figures, between   September  2008 and March 2009  overall employment went up by 21.8 percent (68,842 persons), from 315,791 persons in September 2008 to 384,633 persons in March 2009.

'The rise in the figures  were buoyed by the local government sector which  went up by 233.5 percent (66,488 persons) during this period.

'A sudden increase in local government employment was due to Ipelegeng Programme employees,' says the CSO.

The  programme  has provided relief in the form of supplementary income support to the poor and unemployed who are adversely affected by unfavourable climatic and economic conditions.

Since its inception in July 2008, the estimated monthly employment created through Ipelegeng has averaged 38,000 for the entire country. The cumulative number of beneficiaries under the programme as of October 2009 was 327,494 people. The  target for Ipelegeng is 40,000 to be employed at any one time.

On the other hand, during the period  central government recorded an increase of 2.2 percent (2,046 persons) while private sector remained relatively constant.

For the period  the private sector had the largest share, accounting for 46.5 percent, followed by central government with 25.0 percent Local Government with 24.7 percent.

Although increases were recorded  in most sectors, the mining & quarrying and manufacturing  recording  decreases  as the economic recession took its   toll on the  two industries  as they experienced decreases of 1,038 (8.9 percent) and 970 persons (2.6 percent) respectively.

On gender, the  CSO says the highest proportion of female employees (62.4 percent) was found in local government, central government followed with 49.9 percent while  the parastatal sector had the lowest (38.5 percent).

The proportion of employees at industry level shows that males were dominant in
industries that need hard labour such as Mining & Quarrying and Construction, with about 90.2 and 87.9 percent respectively. The highest proportion of females was found in health & social work with 70.6 percent. These would be females in the nursing and social work professions. A significant number of females were also found in Hotels & Restaurants with 67.6 percent.

In terms of earnings , data collected during the March 2009 and September 2008 employment surveys,  show that   average monthly earnings were P 3,293 for citizen, P 9,584 for non-citizen and P 3,594 for all employees as at end of March 2009.

For all employees, average earnings dropped from P3,990 in September 2008 to P3,294 in March 2009, a decrease of 21.1 percent.

Monthly average earnings for Local Government employees have been much lower than those for central government and private and parastatal sectors. As at September 2008 local government average earnings was P3,859 and in March 2009 this had declined to P1,423, a 61.4 percent decrease.

'Local Government average earnings have been affected by the lowly paid large number of employees who were engaged in the Ipelegeng Programme and not included in the previous survey,'  says the CSO.