Namibians lost jobs even before Covid – NSA

Jo-Maré Duddy WINDHOEKNearly seven out of every 10 people sampled by the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) were jobless even before the third Covid-19 wave hit the country.More than 45% of unemployed people interviewed by the NSA in rural and urban areas said they lost their jobs due to business closures resulting from Covid-19 restrictions imposed by government since the middle of March this year. About 18% in urban areas where laid off from running businesses, while nearly 12% in the rural areas shared the same fate.The NSA yesterday released the findings of its Covid-19 Household and Job Tracker Survey. A total of 3 593 households – more than half the targeted sample – took part in the countrywide survey from 14 March to 13 April.The NSA asked 10 765 people aged 15 and above whether they were engaged in any kind of economic activities the past seven days prior to the interview date. Only 3 408 respondents - or 31.7% - indicated that they had worked.Men in rural areas were slightly better off than those in urban areas, where only 49% had work in the seven days prior to their interview. About 48.7% of women in rural areas were employed.The survey findings stress the impact of Namibia’s ongoing recession and clearly illustrate that the pandemic isn’t solely to blame for people’s economic woes. Of the 7 360 respondents who were asked whether they were employed before the outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020, only 11.3% said yes.Food security threatenedAbout 54% of surveyed households identified wages of employed members as their main source of income in the 12 months prior to March 2021. Of those who reported non-farm family business as an income source, 65.4% of respondents saw reductions in this source since mid-March 2020.The NSA tried to determine the food security of the households in the 30 days preceding the survey. The study indicated that an estimated 60.1% of the interviewed households said they were worried about having enough food, 60.8% reported that they ate only few kinds of food, while 59.9% reported that they were unable to eat healthy and nutritious food. About 36% of households reported that they went without eating for a whole day.Head of households were asked to indicate which shocks they experienced since the outbreak of Covid-19.The most widely mentioned was the increase in the price of major food items consumed (59.1%), followed by job losses, which was experienced by 29.4% of households.

Namibians lost jobs even before Covid – NSA

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Namibian Sun 2025-09-18

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Namibians lost jobs even before Covid – NSA

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Namibian Sun 2025-09-18

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