South Africa’s unemployment rate has decreased from 33.5 percent in Q2 2024 to 32.1 percent in the Q3 2024. File Picture: Ziphozonke Lushaba / Independent Newspapers
The official unemployment rate has dropped by 1.4% from Q2 2024 to Q3 2023, according to the StatsSA Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) Q3 2024.
StatsSA said that the official unemployment rate has decreased by 1.4 percent from 33.5% in Q2 2024 to 32.1% in the Q3 2024.
According to the QLFS Q3 2024 results, there was growth of 294,000 in the number of employed persons to 16.9 million while there was a decrease of 373,000 in the number of unemployed persons to 8.0 million.
This resulted in a decrease of 79,000 in the labour force during the same period.
There was a rise in discouraged work-seekers by 160,000 or 5.0%. The number of persons who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement grew by 54,000 or 4% between Q2 2024 and Q3 2024.
This has resulted in an increase of 214,000 in the number of those who are not economically active.
According to the survey, the number of persons employed in the formal sector increased by 122,000 for Q3 2024 while the informal sector employment increased by 165,000 over the same period.
The largest increases in employment were recorded for the following industries: Community and social services (194,000), Construction (176,000) and Trade (109,000).
Decreases in employment were recorded in Finance (189,000), Private households (32,000), Manufacturing (20,000) and Transport (18,000).
There were large increases in employment in the Eastern Cape (83,000), Western Cape (75,000), North West (69,000) and Mpumalanga (49,000).
The only decreases were observed in Gauteng (66,000) and KwaZulu-Natal (2,000).
The youth - those between the ages of 15 to 34 years - remain vulnerable in the labour market, according to the survey.
The Q3 2024 results show that the total number of unemployed youth dropped by 171,000 to 4.8 million, while employed youth recorded a growth of 66,000 to 5.8 million.
As a result, the youth unemployment rate lowered from 46.6% in Q2 2024 to 45.5% in Q3 2024.
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