The state of the labour market will be laid bare when Stats SA releases its third-quarter labour force survey on Tuesday, which will also indicate the extent to which the civil unrest in July has had an impact on the unemployment rate, which reached a record high in the second quarter at 34.4%.
The survey will be released against the backdrop of the new Covid-19 variant, which has a potential to undermine SA’s economic recovery and jobs prospects.
The UK led several countries in slapping travel restrictions on SA, leaving the tourism sector in particular desperately exposed before the crucial festive season.
The new variant has again shone the spotlight on the contentious mandatory vaccine, which several SA companies have adopted as a policy at their workplaces. However, it is not an official government policy yet. SA has to date vaccinated just more than 41% of the adult population, which is way below the government’s goal of immunising two-thirds of adult population by December.
The number of employed people fell by 54,000 in the second quarter to 14.9-million during the second quarter 2021, according to Stats SA data. The number of unemployed jumped by 584,000 to 7.8-million, indicating the scale of challenges faced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in making a dent in unemployment, which fuelled a looting frenzy in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, costing the economy an estimated R50bn in damages.
The SA Revenue Service will release the trade balance data on Tuesday, with Bloomberg median estimate putting the trade surplus for October at R23bn, from R22.2bn in September. SA has consistently registered a trade surplus since the second half of 2020, boosted by the surge in commodity prices.
Absa manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) is expected to have eased to 53.3 index points in November, from 53.6 in October. The data is out on Wednesday.
The PMI is based on a survey from respondents in the manufacturing sector conducted by the Bureau for Economic Research, which covers activity such as new sales orders, business activity and employment.
The gauge provides an early indication of underlying economic activity, with a reading above 50 points suggesting expansion in the sector, while anything below 50 points to a contraction.
“Business activity is likely to have benefitted from the seasonal lift ahead of the festive season and year-end. However, persistent supply chain disruptions and materials shortages globally as well as domestic electricity supply disruptions continue to weigh on factory output,” Lara Hodes, economist at Investec said in a note.
“While November flash PMIs indicate ‘a slight acceleration in the pace of economic growth across the world's largest developed economies’, rising cases in a number of countries, could hamper export demand going forward should renewed lockdown measures intensify.”
The Automotive Business Council will also release the new vehicle sales, as well as exports, on Wednesday. New domestic vehicle sales are likely to have risen 6.3% in November, according to Bloomberg median estimate, from 6.1% in the preceding month.
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