The Central Statistical Office (CSO) has disclosed that 68.4 percent of the employed population does not have any form of social security.
CSO Acting Director for Census and Statistics Goodson Sinyenga says government therefore needs to work hard and ensure that most employees have some entitlement to Social Security.
Mr. Sinyenga says going by the international standards which were recently adopted by the CSO in gathering labor market statistics for the country, own use production workers are not considered employed.
He says in the latest figures that the 2018 employed population was estimated at 2,948,971, of which 1,826,418 were male and 1,122,553 were female and 1,128,455 were in rural areas and 1,820,516 were in urban areas.
The Acting Director says “the survey results also show the number of persons who worked exclusively as own use production workers. The estimated number of own use production workers in 2018 was 2,669,003. By international standards, own use production workers are not considered employed. Of the total own use production workers, 14.5 percent were in urban areas while 85.5 percent were in rural areas.”
“Of the 2,948,971 employed persons, 931,906 persons (31.6 percent) were formally employed while 2,017,065 (68.4 percent) were informally employed. The employed population comprised of those in non-agriculture sector (2,118,113 persons) and those in the agriculture sector (830,858 persons).
The formally employed persons in 14.5 85.5 Urban Rural 22| P a g e the Non-agriculture sector accounted for 39.0 percent while the informally employed persons accounted for 61.0 percent. In the Agriculture sector, the formally employed persons accounted for 12.8 percent, whereas the informally employed persons accounted for 87.2 percent.” He adds.