Durban — Women are not participating in the country’s economy as much as men, who are mostly employed.
The current unemployment rate for women is 35.5% compared to 32.6% for men.
This is according to the latest statistics by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). On Tuesday, Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke released the quarterly Labour Force Survey results for the second quarter of 2022.
The stats showed that women who did find work were in vulnerable employment, which could entail difficult work conditions, low productivity or inadequate earnings, compared to men.
Maluleke said in 2022, 47.0% of South African women were recorded as economically inactive. He said this means almost half the working-age women in South Africa are out of the labour force, compared to 35.6% of their male counterparts.
He said the latest global labour force participation rate for women is about 47% compared to 72% for men (ILO, 2022).
“The productive potential of South African women in the labour market remains unused. The labour market continues to favour men and shows no signs of making real progress towards improving prospects for women,” Maluleke said.
He added that from 2012 to 2022, the unemployment rate for women remained above the national average.
“In 2012, the unemployment rate for women was 3.7 percentage points higher than the rate for men, while in 2022, a gap of 2.9 % percentage points was observed,” he said.
Maluleke said that in South Africa, the labour force participation rate for women in Quarter 2:2022 is 53.0% as compared to 64.4% for men, a gap of 11.4 percentage points.
The absorption rate represented the share of the working-age population actually used by the economy.
Women have the lowest absorption rate at 34.2% in Q2:2022, lower than their male counterparts at 43.4%.
The noticeable gap between men and women in terms of absorption rate can be observed over the period 2012 – 2022.
Furthermore, Stats SA revealed that 648 000 jobs were gained between the first quarter of 2022 and the second quarter of 2022. The biggest job gains were recorded in community and social services (276 000), trade (169 000), finance (128 000) and construction (104 000). However, there were job losses in manufacturing (73 000) and transport (54 000). The total number of people employed was 15.6 million in the second quarter of 2022.
The number of unemployed people increased by 132 000 to 8.0 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter.
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, resulting in a net decrease of 635 000 in the not economically active population.
These changes in employment and unemployment resulted in the official unemployment rate decreasing by 0.6 of a percentage point from 34.5% in the first quarter of 2022 to 33.9% in the second quarter of 2022.
The unemployment rate, according to the expanded definition of unemployment, also decreased by 1.4 percentage points to 44.1 % in Q2:2022 compared to Q1:2022.
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