{"id":877449,"date":"2026-09-29T14:28:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T12:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=877449"},"modified":"2026-09-29T14:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T12:30:27","slug":"95000-more-jobs-lost-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/877449\/95000-more-jobs-lost-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"95,000 more jobs lost in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stats SA has published the latest Quarterly Employment Survey for the second quarter of the year, recording a loss of 95,000 jobs year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Total employment in South Africa decreased by 14,000 or -0.1% quarter-on-quarter, from 10.439 million in March 2026 to 10.425 million in June 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was due to decreases in the manufacturing (-20,000 or -1.6%), business services (-13,000 or -0.5%), trade (-8,000 or -0.3%), and transport (-5,000 or -1.1%) industries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were increases reported by the community services (29,000 or +1.0%), electricity (1,000 or +1.5%), mining (1,000 or +0.2 %), and construction (1,000 or +0.2 %) industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Total employment decreased by 95,000 or -0.9% year-on-year between June 2025 and June 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full-time employment decreased by 40,000 or -0.4% quarter-on-quarter, and by 96,000 or -1.0% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part-time employment increased by 26,000 or +2.4% quarter-on-quarter and by 1,000 or 0.1% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The QES data follows a dismal Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) in August 2026, which revealed that the country\u2019s unemployment rate had spiked to 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between April and June 2026, the number of unemployed persons increased by 345,000 to 8.5 million, while the number of employed persons decreased by 16,000 to 16.7 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in an increase of 329,000 in the labour force during the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The QES and QLFS differ in that the QES is an enterprise-based survey that draws data from private, non-agricultural businesses (eg, factories, offices, stores).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the name implies, the QLFS is a worker survey that samples the wider labour force and reflects employment numbers across the economy as a whole, including agriculture and the informal sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read in combination, however, both surveys show severe strain in the South African economy and an entrenched struggle to create jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was underlined by the GDP figures for the second quarter of the year, which show a 0.2% decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The latest Quarterly Employment Survey shows that almost 100,000 more jobs were lost in the second quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":796661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2104911331920855206","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2220608138759585","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18109520627582255","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[22112,1809],"class_list":["post-877449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-qes","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877449","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=877449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877458,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877449\/revisions\/877458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}