A recovery in the labour sector will take months, trade union Solidarity said on Tuesday.

In a statement following the release of unemployment data by Statistics SA, the union said although 89 000 net new jobs were created in the fourth quarter of 2009, the number of discouraged job seekers actually cancelled out the progress made.

"The number of discouraged job seekers has increased by 54,000 in the past quarter," said Solidarity spokesman Jaco Kleynhans.

"Unemployment levels in South Africa have now merely stagnated, but it doesn't mean that thousands of new job opportunities will soon arise."

Job creation 'not sustainable'

Kleynhans said the jobs created for the soccer world cup were not at all sustainable in the long term, and job creation at this level could not be regarded as progress.

"Unemployment, according to the broad definition, is estimated at 31.1 percent for both the third and the fourth quarters of 2009.

"The broad definition of unemployment includes both unemployed people and discouraged jobseekers.

"According to the survey, there was a net loss of 681 000 jobs since the beginning of the economic downturn in the third quarter of 2008 up to the fourth quarter of 2009," Kleynhans said.

Some bright spots

However, Solidarity was optimistic about signs of improvement in the manufacturing sector.

"This sector has suffered considerable losses in the past year.

"In the second quarter of 2009, 9000 jobs were lost, followed by a massive loss of close to 150 000 jobs in the third quarter of 2009."

Solidarity noted that the sector had created 19 000 jobs in the fourth quarter of last year.

Although the improvement in employment seemed positive, Kleynhans indicated that the share of job creation in the informal sector rather than the formal sector put a dampener on the improvement.

"According to the survey, job creation in the informal sector was approximately three times higher than in the formal sector in the fourth quarter."

He said higher job creation in the formal sector was ultimately necessary to ensure that South Africans on all levels could earn a more sustainable income than what was traditionally the case in the informal sector.

"The formal manufacturing sector, in particular, is a vital component of the South African economy and currently has a 17 percent share of the total formal employment figures.

"The stabilisation in this sector is definitely good news for the South African economy."

Recovery 'will take months'

Kleynhans said that job levels were reaching a plateau.

"Seeing that the improvement in the economy that has been visible since the third quarter of 2009 will only begin to affect the employment sector later on, we can reasonably expect that the broad unemployment rate will improve."

He said would still take months.

"The first signs of this improvement are, however, visible in the Kagiso PMI figures and other leading indicators," Kleynhans said.

"Developing countries generally find it harder to recover from the recession than developed countries."

SA set to shake off gloom

Although South Africa was also a developing country, it had a much larger services component than many of the other developing countries, he said.

"We can therefore expect that South Africa will be able to shake off the burden of last year's gloomy circumstances faster and show improvement in employment levels as well."

Kleynhans said Tuesday's jobless data illustrated that, among other things, the financial, construction and trade sectors showed the biggest improvement in employment, with 77 000, 28 000 and 21 000 posts having been created in these sectors respectively during the fourth quarter of 2009.

"However, the agriculture and domestic sectors still struggled, losing 38 000 and 31 000 jobs respectively," he said.