{"id":812662,"date":"2025-02-18T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T10:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=812662"},"modified":"2025-02-18T12:44:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T10:44:46","slug":"unemployment-drops-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/812662\/unemployment-drops-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment drops in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s unemployment rate has decreased marginally, with the latest data showing that 31.9% of South Africans are unemployed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to an increase of 18,000 in the number of the net economically active population to 16.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The largest increases were seen in Finance (232,000) and Manufacturing (41,000.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, the largest decreases were seen in the Free State (25,000), North West (20,000) and
Limpopo (16,000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The total number of employed youth also increased by 37,000 to 5.8 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, the youth unemployment rate decreased from 45,5% in Q3 2024 to 44.6% in Q4 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Source: Stats SA<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s unemployment rate may have dropped, but the expanded definition of unemployment remains incredibly high. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":642143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1809],"class_list":["post-812662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812662","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\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812662"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812674,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812662\/revisions\/812674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}