{"id":298888,"date":"2019-02-12T11:37:44","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T09:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=298888"},"modified":"2019-02-12T11:37:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T09:37:44","slug":"south-african-unemployment-rate-drops-to-27-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/298888\/south-african-unemployment-rate-drops-to-27-1\/","title":{"rendered":"South African unemployment rate drops to 27.1%"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stats SA has published its latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the fourth quarter of 2018, showing that South Africa ended last year with an unemployment rate of 27.1%.<\/p>\n

This puts the unemployment rate at 0.4 of a percentage point lower than 3Q2018, where the rate climbed marginally to 27.5%.<\/p>\n

According to Stats SA, the working-age population increased by 149,000 or 0.4% in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to the third quarter of the same year. Compared to Q4: 2017, the working age population increased by 608,000 or 1.6%.<\/p>\n

The number of employed persons increased by 149,000 to 16.5 million in Q4: 2018 while the number of unemployed persons declined by 70,000 to 6.1 million compared to Q3: 2018, resulting in an increase of 79,000 (up by 0.3%) in the number of people in the labour force.<\/p>\n

The absorption rate increased by 0.2 of a percentage point to 43.3% and the unemployment rate declined by 0.4 of a percentage point to 27.1% compared to the third quarter of 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Employment increased in three of the four sectors in Q4: 2018; with the formal sector recording the largest employment gains of 92 000 followed by Private households (65,000) and Agriculture (7,000).<\/p>\n

The informal sector employment declined by 15,000 jobs. There was a net increase of 70,000 in the not economically active population, resulting in the number of discouraged work-seekers increasing by 108 000 while there was a decline of 38,000 in the number of people who were not economically active due to other reasons other than discouragement.<\/p>\n

Compared to a year ago, employment and unemployment increased by 2.2% (358,000) and 4.4% (259,000) respectively. The number of persons who were not economically active declined by 0.1% (9,000).<\/p>\n

Employment by industry<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between Q3: 2018 and Q4: 2018, the number of employed persons increased in six of the ten industries; with the largest increases recorded in Finance and other business services (109,000), Private households (65,000), Manufacturing (48,000), Mining (31,000) and Trade (14,000).<\/p>\n

However, employment declines were recorded in Community and social services (51,000), Transport (30,000), Utilities (22,000) and Construction (21,000).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0<\/strong>South African unemployment rate climbs as the formal sector sheds jobs<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stats SA has published its latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the fourth quarter of 2018, showing that South Africa ended last year with an unemployment rate of 27.1%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":65646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-298888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298888","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=298888"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298926,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298888\/revisions\/298926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}