{"id":823898,"date":"2025-05-13T12:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T10:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=823898"},"modified":"2025-05-13T12:07:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T10:07:17","slug":"unemployment-jumps-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/823898\/unemployment-jumps-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment jumps in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s official unemployment rate has increased to 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025, jumping a full percentage point from the last quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This exceeded economists’ expectations, who anticpated a smaller climb of just 0.2 percentage points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first quarter of the year historically shows a drop-off in employment as businesses shed the seasonal hires of the festive season and thousands of fresh matriculants and graduates enter the job market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 32.9%, the unemployment rate is at the exact same level as it was in Q1 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the results of Stats SA’s Quarterly Labor Force Survey (QLFS), the first quarter of the year saw a drop of 291,000 employed people to 16.8 million from 17.1 million in Q4 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile there was an increase of 237,000 in the number of unemployed persons to 8.2 million, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in a decrease of 54,000 (down by 0.2%) in the labour force during the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discouraged work-seekers increased by 7,000 (up by 0.2%), and the number of persons who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement increased by 177,000 (up by 1.4%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to an increase of 184,000 in the number of the not economically active population, to 16.7 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above changes in employment and unemployment resulted in the official unemployment rate increasing by 1.0 percentage point from 31.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expanded unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2025 increased by 1.2 percentage points to 43.1% when compared with the fourth quarter of 2024, which was 41.9%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats SA noted that the largest industry increases in employment were recorded in Transport (67,000) Finance (60,000) and Utilities (35,000). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decreases in employment were recorded in Trade (194,000), Construction (119,000), Private households (68,000), Community and Social services (45,000), and Mining (35,000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results also indicate that increases in employment were observed in Western Cape (49,000), Gauteng (9,000) and Free State (4,000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decreases were observed in KwaZulu-Natal (104,000), Eastern Cape (83,000), North West (57,000), Limpopo (55,000), Mpumalanga (43,000) and Northern Cape (12,000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Youth unemployment remains a huge issue in the country, with those aged 15\u201334 years being exceptionally vulnerable in the labour market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results for the first quarter of 2025 show that the total number of unemployed youth increased by
151,000 to 4.8 million, while employed youth recorded a decrease of 153,000 to 5.7 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, the youth unemployment rate increased from 44.6% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 46.1% in the first quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s official unemployment rate has increased to 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025, jumping a full percentage point from the last quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":812429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[16476,1809,3651],"class_list":["post-823898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-qlfs","tag-stats-sa","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823898","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=823898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":823901,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823898\/revisions\/823901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}