Unemployment drops in South Africa

South Africa’s unemployment rate has decreased marginally, with the latest data showing that 31.9% of South Africans are unemployed.

According to Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), there was an increase of 132,000 in the number of employed persons in South Africa to 17.1 million in Q4 2024.

The number of unemployed persons decreased by 20,000 to 8.0 million, which resulted in an increase of 112,000 (up by 0.4%) in the labour force during the same period.

The number of discouraged work-seekers increased by 111,000 (up by 3.3%), and the number of persons who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement decreased by 93,000 (down by 0.7%).

This led to an increase of 18,000 in the number of the net economically active population to 16.5 million.

The above changes in employment and unemployment resulted in the official unemployment rate decreasing by 0.2 percentage points from 32.1% in Q3 2024 to 31.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The expanded unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2024 remained unchanged at 41.9%, which also remained the same as the third quarter of 2024.

Stats SA said that the number of persons employed in the formal sector increased by 90,000 in Q4 2024, while the informal sector saw an increase of 34,000.

The largest increases were seen in Finance (232,000) and Manufacturing (41,000.)

The largest drops were seen in Community and Social services (63,000), Trade (48,000), Construction (22,000), Mining (18,000), Utilities (17,000) and Agriculture (11,000).

The results also indicate that the largest increases in employment were seen in the Western Cape (62,000), KwaZulu-Natal (52,000) and Gauteng (45,000).

On the other hand, the largest decreases were seen in the Free State (25,000), North West (20,000) and
Limpopo (16,000).

The youth (15-34 years) remain extremely vulnerable in the labour market, even though the results for Q4 2024 showed that the total number of unemployed youth decreased by 133,000 to 4.7 million.

The total number of employed youth also increased by 37,000 to 5.8 million.

As a result, the youth unemployment rate decreased from 45,5% in Q3 2024 to 44.6% in Q4 2024.