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1.2 Million People To Lose Their jobs Within 6 Months

The recent BeyondCOVID Business Survey, by Redflank, spoke to 4377 businesses across SA to find out how they were coping with the lockdown.

44% of large businesses reported being back to business fully while 83% of smaller businesses are still running on a reduced output and staff compliment.

When asked to look ahead, most businesses predicted that it will take at least 3.5 years for things to “normalise” and get back to how they were pre lockdown.

‘businesses were asked if they were going to have to reduce staff numbers and retrench workers’

In one of the scarier statistics, businesses were asked if they were going to have to reduce staff numbers and retrench workers. They were also asked how many workers they would have to let go. The survey reports that these 4377 businesses expect to have to retrench an additional 1.2 million workers in the next 6 months.

‘4377 businesses expect to have to retrench an additional 1.2 million workers in the next 6 months’

Last year (2020) 2.2 million people lost their jobs. Some got work back as lockdown levels eased and by the end of the year and 1.3 million were still out of a job.

Read About SA’s Shockingly High Unemployment Rate Here