Third-quarter job gains fail to stem rising unemployment

Résumé détaillé

Despite adding 101,000 jobs in the third quarter, South Africa's official unemployment rate climbed to 33.7%, leaving more than 13 million people unemployed…

South Africa’s quarterly employment gain has left the country with fewer people working than at the start of the year, while the number unemployed or in the potential labour force has reached about 13.2 million.

Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, released on Tuesday, showed that employment increased by 101,000 to 16.8 million between July and September. But the number of unemployed people also rose, by 97,000 to 8.6 million, pushing the official unemployment rate up to 33.7% from 33.6%.

A further 4.6 million people were counted in the potential labour force, which includes those available for work but not searching, and those searching but not currently available. Combined with official unemployment, they accounted for 44% of the extended labour force, up from 43.8% in the previous quarter.

Economist Duma Gqubule said this broader measure, known as LU3, better reflected the scale of South Africa’s jobs crisis. Counting only people actively looking for work, he argued, overlooked those who had abandoned a search they could no longer sustain.

“People can’t search for jobs that don’t exist,” he told the Mail & Guardian.

He described the unemployment situation as a “calamity” and cautioned against interpreting one quarter’s employment increase as evidence of a recovery.

“We’d have to see this thing confirmed over a few quarters to say that the economy has turned.”

The latest gain followed employment losses of 345,000 in the first quarter and 16,000 in the second. Gqubule put the net loss since the end of 2025 at about 260,000 jobs, even after the third-quarter increase.

The official unemployment rate has risen in each quarter of 2026. It stood at 31.4% at the end of last year, before increasing to 32.7% in the first quarter and 33.6% in the second.

Début de l'article, extrait de Mail & Guardian. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.