Formal employment shows slight increase

Isaac Pinielo | Wednesday December 21, 2016 23:44

 

According to latest Stats Brief released on Monday by Statistics Botswana (SB), formal employment increased by 0.8%, which represents 3,095 persons from 404,387 persons in March 2016 to 407,482 persons in June 2016.

Private organisations recorded the highest increase in employment of 1.2%, followed by the local government and central government at 0.7% each.

“The increase in employment for private organisations is reportedly mainly contributed by the construction and hotels and restaurants industries, which recorded two percent increase each,” said SB. Parastatal organisations recorded a decrease in employment of 2.6%.

The statistical body also noted that in June 2016, a total of 12,170, which is three percent of employees, were non-citizens. The majority, which is 10,907 or 89.9% of non-citizen employees were employed in the private and parastatal sectors.

Furthermore, data for non-citizen employees by sector showed that the education was the major employer of non-citizens with 17.9%, followed by the construction industry at 16.1% and manufacturing industry with 14.9%.

On estimated number of employees by economic activity or sector for June 2016, SB stated that a total of 407,482 employees were recorded, of which 204,103 or 50.1% were males while 203,384 or 49.9% were females.

“Monthly average earnings for citizens stood at P5,300, P18,719 for non-citizen and P5,701 for all employees as at end of June 2016,” said SB.

There was an increase of 2.8% in monthly average earnings for all employees from March 2016 with P5,544 to June 2016 with P5,701.

The minimum hourly rate increased by 45% between 2007 and 2015 from 355 thebe to 515 thebe respectively.

SB stated that minimum hourly wage rates for the year 2016 were not available, noting however that the rates have been increasing over the years except for 2008 to 2011, where the rates remained the same for four years.