95,000 more jobs lost in South Africa
Stats SA has published the latest Quarterly Employment Survey for the second quarter of the year, recording a loss of 95,000 jobs year-on-year.
Total employment in South Africa decreased by 14,000 or -0.1% quarter-on-quarter, from 10.439 million in March 2026 to 10.425 million in June 2026.
This was due to decreases in the manufacturing (-20,000 or -1.6%), business services (-13,000 or -0.5%), trade (-8,000 or -0.3%), and transport (-5,000 or -1.1%) industries.
There were increases reported by the community services (29,000 or +1.0%), electricity (1,000 or +1.5%), mining (1,000 or +0.2 %), and construction (1,000 or +0.2 %) industries.
Total employment decreased by 95,000 or -0.9% year-on-year between June 2025 and June 2026.
Full-time employment decreased by 40,000 or -0.4% quarter-on-quarter, and by 96,000 or -1.0% year-on-year.
Part-time employment increased by 26,000 or +2.4% quarter-on-quarter and by 1,000 or 0.1% year-on-year.
The QES data follows a dismal Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) in August 2026, which revealed that the country’s unemployment rate had spiked to 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026.
Between April and June 2026, the number of unemployed persons increased by 345,000 to 8.5 million, while the number of employed persons decreased by 16,000 to 16.7 million.
This resulted in an increase of 329,000 in the labour force during the same period.
The QES and QLFS differ in that the QES is an enterprise-based survey that draws data from private, non-agricultural businesses (eg, factories, offices, stores).
As the name implies, the QLFS is a worker survey that samples the wider labour force and reflects employment numbers across the economy as a whole, including agriculture and the informal sector.
Read in combination, however, both surveys show severe strain in the South African economy and an entrenched struggle to create jobs.
This was underlined by the GDP figures for the second quarter of the year, which show a 0.2% decline.
Loading ...