South Africa’s official unemployment rate increased from 32.9% in the first quarter of this year to 33.5% in the second quarter.
This is the highest rate since 2022. Economists polled by Bloomberg expected unemployment to improve to below 32%.
Some 8.4 million people are now unemployed in South Africa – from 5.2 million a decade ago, Statistics SA reported. More than 76% of these people have been without a job for more than a year, compared to less than 66% in 2024.
Statistics SA says that 3.6 million (35.2%) out of 10.3 million young people aged 15 to 24 years were not in employment, education or training.
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The expanded unemployment rate – which includes discouraged work-seekers who have given up on searching for a job rose to 42.6% in the second quarter of 2024.
Of the provinces, North West (54.2%) had the highest expanded unemployment rate in the second quarter, followed by the Eastern Cape (49.7%). Limpopo recorded the highest difference between expanded and official unemployment rates of 15.7 percentage points.
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