Unemployment rate climbs in third quarter

Unemployment in SA continued to accelerate in the third quarter, reaching 34.9%, up from 34.4% in the preceding three months, statistician-general Risenga Maluleke said on Tuesday.

Presenting the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the third quarter in Irene, Tshwane on Tuesday, Maluleke said the number of employed people fell by 660,000 in the three months to end-september to 14.3-million, while the number of unemployed people decreased by 183,000 to 7.6-million.

SA’S economy is dogged by high rates of inequality, poverty and unemployment, and the economy took a further battering from the Covid-19 with about 1.4-million jobs lost in 2020 and it contracted 6.4%.

Maluleke said the number of discouraged job seekers increased by 545,000 (16.4%), while the number of people who were not economically active “for reasons other than discouragement” increased by 443,000 (3.3%) between the two quarters, “resulting in a net increase of 988,000 in the not economically active population”.

“These changes resulted in the unemployment rate increasing by 0.5 of a percentage point from 34.4% in the second quarter of 2021 to 34.9% in the third quarter of 2021 — the highest since the start of the QLFS in 2008,” Maluleke said.

“Unemployment as measured by the expanded definition increased by 2.2 percentage points to 46.6% in the third quarter of 2021 compared with the second quarter of 2021.”

During the period under review, employment decreased by 571,000 (5.6%) in the formal sector, by 65,000 (5.4%) in private households, and by 32,000 (3.8%) in agriculture. Informal sector employment increased by 9,000 (0.3%).