South African Unemployment Rate Rises to 34.4%(Highest in the World) | Hacker News Reader

South African Unemployment Rate Rises to 34.4%(Highest in the World)

bloomberg.com

46 points0xedb27 comments

> South Africa’s unemployment rate surged to the highest on a global list of 82 countries monitored by Bloomberg.

Big difference, I knew this was not the highest in the world, because I come from Africa too and there are worse countries than SA unemployment wise.

South Africa is even a bright spot when compared with the rest of Sub Sahara African nations.

Why voting me down? I am an African, and I live in Africa.

I don’t know why small countries don’t outsource their land registries like they do with printing cash and dual listings of stocks on foreign markets. Would make bringing in foreign investment so much easier.

If you have property rights and the rule of law. Otherwise, when you've bought land, you actually own nothing.

If you have nothing, you bought nothing.

But I am talking about the people selling (governments controlling taxation on the land).

It’s the same with ADR’s , the market prices in the risk of local regulations or lack of them.

If the taliban outsourced the Afghanistan land registry to the usa or even China through ADR’s, I would buy some land there the next day. same with Burma, Haiti and other troubled countries. Wall Street bets would pump so much money into these countries, they wouldn’t need the IMF and the UN anymore.

Isn't unemployment rate a weird magic number that changes depending on how the government decides to calculate it?

There are different definitions of unemployment (BLS uses U1 through U6) and they give different numbers, but the US government is pretty consistent at using U3 as the "official" unemployment rate. When the other unemployment rates are mentioned, it's usually as rhetorical devices by politicians/pundits to say how the badly the current administration is doing (eg. "you're a fool if you think the unemployment rate is [U3 unemployment rate], the actual unemployment rate is [U4/U5/U6 unemployment rate]!"). I'm not aware of governments flip flopping between different unemployment definitions, at least in developed countries.

It's time for a very basic question. Why is it profitable to not work or hire people?

Quoting the article:

"South African companies’ ability to hire is undermined by an education system that doesn’t provide adequate skills, and strict labor laws that make hiring and firing workers onerous. The apartheid-era strategy of placing so-called townships, where many Black citizens were compelled to live, on the periphery of cities also makes it difficult for residents to access the formal jobs market."

> The apartheid-era strategy of placing so-called townships, where many Black citizens were compelled to live, on the periphery of cities also makes it difficult for residents to access the formal jobs market.

And the new regime couldn't mitigate that problem in almost 30 years?

There's a word Bloomberg didn't use: corruption.

.... yea im sure it has nothing to do with the massive deadly riots that tore apart parts the country ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That is a really shortsighted view of the situation. The riots are relatively new and caused by the longstanding social and economic stagnation. The core problems are much more difficult and enduring than breaks in social order.

Moreover, riots are a symptom, not a cause.

Sure, riots are definitely a symptom, but the scale and destruction associated with the recent riots could well also be contributing to a rise in unemployment.

Also recent riots change recent behavior. Why would I construct a new system and buy equipment to do business if I now believe that the government that I pay taxes to won't defend the business from lawless riots. Additionally, why throw good money after bad? If the situation changes on the ground such that a reasonable investment becomes a very poor investment due to the recently changed probability of recouping my costs, why would I pour money into that?

Something of this phenomenon was found in the Scottish/English borderlanders as written of in "The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers" . They didn't grow as many crops ( an investment). The Scots were at times driven to only producing assets that they could carry or drive before them such as livestock.

No surprises there. The generous covid-19 payouts is more then minimum wage salaries minus transportation cost.

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