SA’s unemployment rate rises

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South Africa’s official unemployment rate has risen slightly, undoing the series of retreats recorded in 2022.

According to data released by Statistics South Africa on Tuesday, the country’s jobless rate rose to 32.9% of the labour force in the first quarter of 2023, up from 32.7%. This is after the rate fell during four consecutive quarters in 2022, bringing it down from the record highs booked in the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The number of employed workers, the data shows, increased by 258 000 to 16.2 million in the first quarter of 2023 compared with the fourth quarter of 2022. But 179 000 more people were added to the ranks of the country’s unemployed. In total there are now 7.9 million people without jobs in South Africa, up from 7.8 million last quarter.

Meanwhile, 426 000 people were added to the country’s labour force, probably the result of discouraged workers returning to the job market as well as the entrance of new matriculants and graduates.

The expanded unemployment rate — which also counts job seekers who have given up on the search — decreased slightly to 42.4% from 42.6% in the fourth quarter of 2022.

South Africa has struggled to claw back the jobs it lost in the first months of the pandemic in 2020, when 2.2 million people found themselves without work. In the quarters that followed, the official unemployment rate rose to record levels, until the beginning of 2022.

The number of employed workers is still lower than it was prior to the pandemic. In the first quarter of 2020, there were close to 16.4 million employed people. The number of unemployed people is also significantly higher than it was during the first quarter of 2020, when the number stood at seven million. The unemployment rate at the time was 30%.

According to Stats SA’s data, employment increases were mainly seen in the financial services sector, as well as in the community and social services sector. 

Employment losses were recorded in trade, mining, construction and manufacturing. But the biggest loss by far was to employment in private households, which shed 85 000 jobs between the last quarter of 2022 and the first of 2023.

Economists were expecting a slight increase in the unemployment rate in the first quarter, given the likely effect of severe load-shedding on job creation.