The Herald in an article headlined, ‘Economy creates 200,000 new jobs in first quarter’, makes a number of claims based on ZimStat employment figures. These claims range from increase in number of people employed to jobs created.
What is fact and what is fiction? We checked.
CLAIM 1: The latest data released by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), shows that the number of employed (formally and informally) individuals rose by 116 650 to 3,29 million compared to 3,17 million in the previous quarter.
VERDICT: False
While the difference is negligible and could be a typing error, the number of employed individuals rose by 116,560 from 3,173,293 in the last quarter of 2023 to 3,289,853 in the first quarter of 2024. The difference though is negligible.
CLAIM 2: This means the economy created 200,000 jobs after 101,352 workers lost their jobs in the same period.
VERDICT: Misleading
In calculating the number of jobs created, the Herald mixes up figures from the last quarter of 2023 and those of the first quarter of 2024. The Herald reports that, ‘But the latest data released by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), shows that the number of employed (formally and informally) individuals rose by 116,650 to 3,29 million compared to 3,17 million in the previous quarter. This means the economy created 200,000 jobs after 101,352 workers lost their jobs in the same period.’
The Herald takes the number of lost jobs reported in the first quarter and subtracts the number from employed individuals of the 4th quarter (3,173,293 – 101,352 = 3,071,940). It then subtracts this number from the number of individuals employed in the first quarter to come up with the created jobs numbering i.e 3,289,853 – 3,071,940=217,913. Notably, the Herald takes the number of people who lost their jobs and adds it to the difference between the number of 1st quarter 2024 employed people and 4th quarter 2023 employed people.
This is misleading because the number of jobs lost can not justifiably be included in the number of jobs created. Basically, rather than 217,913 jobs being created in the first quarter, if 101,352 jobs had not been lost this quarter, the number of employed people would have risen by 217,913 and not 116,560 as it, in fact, did.
So, no, 217,913 jobs were not created in the first quarter. Rather 116,560 jobs were created and 101,352 jobs lost.
In the last quarter of 2023, 75,243 jobs were lost in contrast to the 101,352 reported by The Herald for the first quarter.
CLAIM 3: However, the overall positive development marks a significant milestone, being the first quarter-on-quarter rise in employment observed since the onset of economic challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
VERDICT: False
Contrary to The Herald’s claim, this is not the first quarter on quarter rise in employment observed since the onset of economic challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 1st quarter of 2023 recorded 3,207,535 people employed and in the 2nd quarter of 2023 the number was 3,239,965. This marked a quarter on quarter rise. In the 3rd quarter of the same year, the number of individuals employed was recorded by ZimStat as 3,121,007. A drop from the 2nd quarter. It, however, rose again in the 4th quarter of 2023 to 3,173,293 marking a quarter on quarter rise before the current one to 3,289,853, the highest in over a year.
