{"id":122985,"date":"2016-05-09T12:10:05","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T10:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=122985"},"modified":"2016-05-09T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T10:54:28","slug":"massive-jump-in-south-african-unemployment-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/122985\/massive-jump-in-south-african-unemployment-rate\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive jump in South African unemployment rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New data shows that South Africa&#8217;s unemployment rate increased to 26.7% of the labour force in the first quarter of 2016, up 2.2\u00a0percentage points\u00a0from 24.5% in the fourth quarter of 2015.<\/p>\n<p>StatisticsSA said that employment levels declined quarter-to-quarter in all industries except Community &amp; Social services and Agriculture which grew by 51,000 and 16,000 respectively.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest job losses were observed in Trade (119,000), Manufacturing (100,000) and Construction (77,000).<\/p>\n<p>Employment declined by 2.2\u00a0percentage points,\u00a0or 355,000 in Q1: 2016, which combined with an increase in the number of unemployed persons of 521,000 resulted in an unemployment rate of 26.7%.<\/p>\n<p>However, on a year-on-year basis, employment was still higher in Q1: 2016 by 204,000 compared to the same period last year, StatsSA said.<\/p>\n<p><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-new-size wp-image-122993\" src=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment-640x461.png\" alt=\"Unemployment\" width=\"640\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment-640x461.png 640w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment-300x216.png 300w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment-768x554.png 768w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment-140x102.png 140w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unemployment.png 1014w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite the quarterly increase, employment in Agriculture was lower by 15,000 compared to a year ago. The opposite pattern was observed in Mining, Construction, Trade and Finance &amp; other business services.<\/p>\n<p>While employment declined quarter-to-quarter in these industries, employment levels increased on an annual basis in Mining (30,000), Construction (40,000), Trade (115,000) and by 23,000 in Finance &amp; other business services, the data collecting body said.<\/p>\n<p>Community &amp; social services grew both quarter-to-quarter and year-on-year while Manufacturing declined on both quarter-to-quarter (100,000) and year-on-year (141,000).<\/p>\n<p>The expanded unemployment rate which includes those who were available to work but did not look for work in the reference period also increased by 2.5 percentage points between Q4: 2015 and Q1: 2016 to 36.3%, StatsSA said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on employment<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/121632\/these-4-graphs-will-change-your-thinking-on-employment-in-sa\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>These 4 graphs will change your thinking on employment in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/114254\/south-african-employment-figures-2014-vs-2015\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>South African employment figures: 2014 vs 2015<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/114256\/south-africas-unemployment-rate-drops-to-to-24-5\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>South Africa\u2019s unemployment rate drops to 24.5%<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News data shows that South Africa&#8217;s unemployment rate increased to 26.7% of the labour force in the first quarter of 2016, up 2.2% from the previous quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":98829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26,5769],"class_list":["post-122985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline","tag-statssa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122985"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123005,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122985\/revisions\/123005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}