Innocent BenjaminBarely moments after the UK released reports that they were suffering a job crisis, South Africa has followed suit by unveiling an identical predicament as new reports show the nation’s unemployment rate is at its highest level ever.
The statistics show that the amount of jobless people in the last three months of 2020 stood at 32.5 percent, translating to 7.2 million citizens, the highest ever documented rate since data collation began in 2008.
In recent times, South Africa have been clobbered by distressing events from wading into recession at the start of 2020, to becoming the most afflicted African nation with Covid-19, to witnessing a new variant of the virus mutate in their land, the bad news kept coming.
“We are seeing that the proportion of people of working age, versus the proportion of those that are employed, is widening, meaning the market is not creating sufficient jobs to absorb enough (people),” said Statistician General Risenga Maluleke in a news conference.
The figures were a 1.4 million rise from 2019 and tails a grim study from borgenproject, which emphatically stated that,
“COVID-19 has made poverty worse in South Africa,” adding, “there is no doubt that the pandemic has exacerbated many of the underlying issues surrounding poverty in the country.
Lockdowns, for example, have halted employment and left many South Africans with the impossible choice of working to provide food or staying home to stay safe. Forecasts are currently estimating that the pandemic may push up to 1 million people into poverty.”
Tesla Market Crash
Tesla has lost over 14 percent of its shares in two days, just two weeks after investing $1.5 billion into Bitcoin. During premarket trading on Tuesday, the electric-car giants lost 6%, adding more recession to the 8.5% depreciation on Monday.
This negative returns contrasts to the record high shares of $743.74 attained in January and the recent figures of $672 is lower than $695, the price at which they joined benchmark S&P 500.
This loss coincides with the crash of the cryptocurrency market and comes just days after Elon Musk remarked on Twitter that the prices of Bitcoin and Ehteruem “seem high”.
That said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2021
Tesla is facing increased competition from rival brands following the large influx of gasoline-fueled automobiles into the electric-car sector.
Jaguar and Ford have revealed plans to go all-electric in the coming years, while CEO of BMW, Oliver Zipse, had thrown the gauntlet at the world’s best-selling electric car makers at a conference on Tuesday,
“It won’t be easy for Tesla to continue at that speed because the rest of the industry is moving ahead big time,” Zipse reportedly said at the DLD All Stars tech conference reported by Bloomberg.
Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities, however felt the crash came as a result of Tesla shooting themselves in the foot,
“It’s been a number of factors contributing to this red tape for Tesla. First, Tesla stopping sales of its lowest price Model Y coupled by continued price cuts have led to Street demand worries. To this point, we never viewed this Model Y version as moving the needle and continued price cuts is part of the overall Tesla strategy to spur demand. Second, the Bitcoin sell off has attached itself to the Tesla story as now in the eyes of the Street Bitcoin and Tesla are attached at the hip.”
OFONIMEH JOHNSON
James steller
Mitrobe Staff