SA unemployment rate remains at 14-year worst levels of 27.7%

·31 Oct 2017

Stats SA has released its Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of the year, showing that the unemployment rate in the country has remained fairly stable at 27.7% – the worst levels in 14 years.

The stats body revealed that while employment grew by 92,000 in the third quarter, this was offset by an additional 33,000 job-seekers during the same period. It said that 67% of the unemployed have been looking for work for a year or more.

The growth in employment was mainly driven by finance and other business services industry which grew by 68,000, followed by community, social and personal services (56,000) and transport (34,000).

All other industries reported employment growth quarter-to-quarter except manufacturing, construction and agriculture which declined by 50,000, 30,000 and 25,000 respectively.

While the official unemployment rate remained unchanged quarter-to-quarter, this is still 0.6 of a percentage point higher compared to the same period last year.

The number of employed persons in the formal sector increased by 187,000 in Q3: 2017, this is after employmnent losses of 144,000 in Q2: 2017. And after employment gains of 80,000 in the informal sector in the second quarter of 2017, the sector continued to record employment losses of 71,000 in Q3: 2017.

This is the third highest quarterly decline in employment since Q2: 2010, StatsSA said.

The largest decline in the unemployment rate was recorded in Free State (down by 2.6 percentage points), Limpopo (down by 1.7 percentage points) and Mpumalanga (down by 1.6 percentage points).

The expanded unemployment rate which includes those who wanted to work but did not look for work increased by 0.2 of a percentage point in Q3: 2017 to 36.8%, StatsSA said.