Unemployment eases: 15.6-million people have a job, while 8-million don't

The official unemployment rate decreased by a 0.6 percentage point to 33.9% in the second quarter of this year as 648,000 new jobs were created during the period, says Stats SA in its Quarterly Labour Force Survey, released on Tuesday.

The biggest job gains were recorded in community and social services (276,000), trade (169,000), finance (128,000) and construction (104,000). However, manufacturing lost 73,000 jobs and transport 54,000.

The number of people employed was 15.6-million in the three months to June, while the number of unemployed increased by 132,000 to 8-million in the same period, compared with the previous quarter.

According to Stats SA, the results continue to show that youth remain vulnerable.

The second quarter of 2022 saw the number of unemployed youth (aged 15 to 34) increase by 2% (or 92,000) to 4.8-million from the first quarter.

“There was a noticeable increase of 7.2%, or 370,000, in the number of employed youth during the same period,” Stats SA said.

The increase in employment and unemployment among the youth resulted in a decrease in youth unemployment of 1.3 percentage points to 46.5% in the second quarter.

The unemployment rate, according to its expanded definition, which factors in discouraged work seekers, decreased by 1.4 percentage points to 44.1% in the second quarter, compared with the first quarter of this year.

The number of discouraged work seekers decreased by 183,000 (4.9%) and the number of people who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement decreased by 452,000 (3.3%) between the two quarters. This resulted in a net decrease of 635,000 in the uneconomically active population.

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