Zimbabwe's Formal Employment Plummets to Half-Century low
- Economy has halved in size, according to the government
- Government spends 83% of revenue on civil servant pay
This article is for subscribers only.
The collapse of Zimbabwe’s manufacturing and agricultural industries has cut the size of the economy by half and left the southern African nation with fewer people in formal employment than at any time in almost half a century.
About 700,000 people have formal jobs, almost equally split between the state and private companies, government and independent statistics show. That’s the lowest number since 1968, when President Robert Mugabe was a jailed freedom fighter, and Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith’s white-minority government was under sanctions for unilaterally declaring independence from the U.K. The nation’s population was then 5.2 million compared with about 13.8 million today.