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The DA welcomes the release of the quarterly employment estimates. The numbers are rather encouraging as it shows that 102 000 new jobs were created during the fourth quarter of 2010.

It is, however, disconcerting that the South African economy has not been able to recover all the jobs lost since the economic recession set in during 2008. Even with these additional gains, the South African economy is still 610 000 jobs short of the total number that were available before the recession.

We therefore call on the Zuma administration to take urgent action on implementing a new jobs plan. The DA has long been advocating for the implementation of a general wage subsidy, as several studies have shown that such a subsidy has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs over several years. These employment numbers emphasise the need for urgent action and therefore we reiterate our call for the implementation of a wage subsidy. Minister Gordhan’s announcement that such a policy has been drafted and would be considered for implementation is a step in the right direction, but unemployed South Africans need urgent action and we thus call on the Minister to speed up the implementation process.

The creation of 102 000 new jobs is certainly a positive development, but all South Africans know that much more needs to be done to address our enormous unemployment problem. The DA will continue fighting for innovative solutions to create new jobs and grow the economy – we hope that the ANC government will follow suit and get serious about implementing a wage subsidy.