Trade union federations say the recent employment statistics show that the efforts by President Cyril Ramaphosa such as the Job Summit are fruitless.
Stats SA released the Labour Force Survey for the third quarter on Tuesday, showing that the unemployment rate has increased by 0.3 percentage point to 27.5%.
That means 6.2 million South Africans are jobless.
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Sizwe Pamla says they are not surprised.
He said: “Very little has been done to boost the economy and the private sector during the jobs summit rejected the moratorium. As far as Cosatu is concerned, we are lucky that it was a 0.3% increase.”
South African Federation of Trade Unions’ Zwelinzima Vavi says the president needs to do more than conferences.
“The people who should be driving the agenda of employment, which is the manufacturing sector, is taking the worst pound. It points to the fact that our economy at the structural level requires a major reconstruction.”
