South African miners accelerate job cuts to 35,000 over two years

Financial Times Africa May - 26 - 2015 , 08:09

South Africa’s mining industry has shed more than 35,000 jobs in two years as it has been battered by labour unrest, rising costs and weak commodity prices, reports The Financial Times.

The scale of the job losses — equivalent to one out of 14 workers in the sector — indicates how the labour unrest that has plagued the industry since the police shooting of 34 striking miners at Marikana in 2012 has accelerated restructuring in the sector.

Mining is one of the biggest private sector employers in South Africa and the new data from the Chamber of Mines — seen by the Financial Times — provide the first detailed analysis of the extent of job losses since the shooting.

South Africa is still ranked the fifth largest gold producer. But the sector has been in decline since the 1990s, during which time the number of people emplooyed across the mining industry plummeted from about 800,000 to below 500,000.

Both sectors are dependent on labour intensive, deep lev