Employment decreased by 69 000 quarter-on-quarter‚ from 9 817 000 in March to 9 748 000 in June this year‚ Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) announced on Wednesday.

StatsSA released its Quarterly Employment Statistics for June 2018‚ which stated that the contraction was largely due to decreases in the following industries: community services (-67 000 or -2.5%)‚ manufacturing (-13 000 or -1.1%)‚ mining and quarrying (-2 000 or -0.4%) and transport (-2 000 or -0.4%).

The statistics organisation said the electricity industry remained unchanged.

However‚ StatsSA said there were increases in the trade (7 000 or 0.3%)‚ business services (7 000 or 0.3%)‚ and construction (1 000 or 0.2%) industries.

StatsSA said the Quarterly Employment Statistics is an enterprise-based survey that collects information from non-agricultural businesses and organisations from approximately 20 000 units.

The samples are drawn from private non-agricultural businesses such as factories‚ firms‚ offices‚ and stores‚ as well as from national‚ provincial and local government entities.

StatsSA said employment increased by 13 000 or 0.1% year-on-year between June 2017 and June 2018.

These increases were reported by: trade (24 000 or 1.1%)‚ community services (22 000 or 0.8%)‚ and business services (18 000 or 0.8%).

However‚ the mining and quarrying (-19 000 or -4.0%)‚ construction (-14 000 or -2.3%) manufacturing (-12 000 or -1.0%)‚ transport (-4 000 or -0.9%) and electricity (-1 000 or -1.6%) industries reported annual decreases.

Average monthly earnings paid to employees in the formal non-agricultural sector increased from R19 853 in February 2018 to R20 176 in May 2018.