Navigating unemployment data: a response to Minister Meth's critique of StatsSA

Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom entered the realm of statistics and ultimately destroyed the Office of the National Statistics (ONS) of the United Kingdom.

Felix Romer in a 2022 Journal article titled Poverty, Inequality Statistics and Knowledge Politics Under Thatcher demonstrates thus “Academic experts such as Townsend criticised the government for delays and omissions in official reports and for misleading statistical definitions that deliberately lowered the poverty count.”

It took fifteen years of hard work from its former colonies to rebuild the UK ONS by Bill McClennan of Australia and Len Cooke of New Zealand who had to cross seas and continents to go and fix ONS.

We do not need that history repeating itself in South Africa.

It needs to be nipped in the bud.

And that is what I am going to relentlessly do as statistician emeritus.

The Honourable Tau, Meth, Sekwati and their cohorts are dancing on Thatcher’s template, but in StatsSA and its current and previous staff they have a match and South Africa can be assured that a Thatcherite debacle will not fly.

As the unemployment debate rages, another day another political missile.

This time around Minister Nomakhosazana Meth leads with yet uninformed discourse talking through all corners of the mouth under an article titled “Capitec CEO  isn’t wrong: Unemployment data needs work.”

She takes the reader through a meandering journey of scholarly papers, and for that she should be given credit. However, where she gets it totally wrong in her ventilatory voyage, she fails to go into the foundational methodological documents from StatsSA.

Two such lay the foundation. In addition, each release of StatsSA liberates any doubting Thomas, which Meth has become one of the most illustrious.

Each would be missile she sends in the direction of StatsSA’s methodology which she has not taken time to acquaint herself, finds a mosquito repellent that buries her missives in the deep burrows, so that she never misinforms again.

The two methodological documents that laid the foundation are Report of the Labour force Statistics Evaluation Mission to south Africa dated March 15-31, 2005, by Alfonso Rodriques Arias who was an advisor to the World Bank.

The other is the Report on the Responses by Statistics South Africa to Recommended Improvements to the Labour Force Survey dated June 2008 which accompanied the first release of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey.

At the behest of President Mbeki and Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, StatsSA recruited Rodriques to critic the Labour Force Survey that was held twice a year.

The two reports form the basis for addressing policy concerns of government.

Continuity of change in government is addressed by acquainting oneself with work of the predecessors.

To what extent Meth’s seventh administration succeeded to secure knowledge from the third administration might remain a big question. In StatsSA the records and knowledge base of the first administration informed all subsequent administrations including the current seventh administration.

In my two articles titled "Debating the labour force suvey" and "To allow ignorance about statsSA to run supreme should not be allowed " I make continuity of change in the state visible. 

In this continuity of change successive ministers of labour accompanied this journey and hopefully were able to educate their counterparts. 

The elaborate vitriol on StatsSA would have not been spewed had Meth acquainted herself with the concerns of and responses to the third administration regarding the QLFS.

To educate the honourable Tau, honourable Meth, honourable Sekwati and other honourable cohorts including the random businessman Gerrie Fourie who like Loane Sharpe of Adcorp spewed vitriol on StatsSA.

Space and time do not permit me to lift everything from the two foundational reports of StatsSA of QLFS.

I would like to lift methodological documents and the QLFS reports. Once you have done so, then we could possibly entertain your public posture towards the work of StatsSA.

To guide you I would just need to lift a few pointers that addresses your uninformed tirade. Arias made thirty seven observations, and twenty five of these related to the questionnaire content, design and administration.

Fourie, Tau, Meth and Sekwati are advised to go and read these twenty five observations and then they can engage sensibly. 

Arias makes two distinct observations, one on informal sector employment and another on informal employment.

For example, on the question of informal sector employment Arias made the following observation – “Observation: Data on sector of employment (formal/informal) are currently determined according to the respondent’s perception of the informal sector.

He recommended thus Recommendation: Collect objective information to get International Labour Organisation (ILO) compatible estimates by employer size and self-employed occupational status. Include information about the employee’s ‘protected’ status.

And Stats SA took the following Action taken by the Statistician General: The questionnaire has 11 questions to identify formal versus informal employment and sector.

The respondent perception question was retained for historical comparability only. On the question of Measurement of Informal Employment Arias made the following Observation: There are no measurements of informal employment based on the status in employment or status of workers, whether or not in combination with characteristics of the production unit.

Recommendation: Adopt the Guidelines of the ILO’s Seventeenth International Conference of Labour Statisticians, 2003. Action taken by the Statistician General: Questions to measure informal employment included. Conformity with ILO guidelines will be adopted. 

The random business man posing as a labour statistician and politicians who became his choristers have no point to make against the function of the Statistician General in as far as the Quarterly Labour Force Survey is concerned.

They should desist from being purveyors of misinformation.

Unemployment and poverty in South Africa are real and will not change because of the lens of measurement, these seekers of good news have their shoe on the wrong foot.

These purveyors of mendacities  should understand that change can only occur when boardroom discourse use science and when politicians start respecting the authority of measurement.

Their responses to statistical observations with the right policy instruments is what is required rather than pandering to business people’s opinions that fail the basic task of understanding the source and manifestation of their riches.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

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