StatsSA has released their Q2 findings of Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) on Tuesday.
The findings reveal that South Africa’s official unemployment rate has decreased to 32.6 percent, with 154,000 more people finding work in the second quarter of this year and the number of unemployed people decreasing by 11,000.
Breaking down these statistics further, StatsSA expanded on the country’s unemployment rate by province.
The province with the highest unemployment rate is the North West at 53.5%, followed by KwaZulu-Natal 46.7%, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape both at 43.3%, Mpumalanga 49.5%, Limpopo 47.9%, Free State 44.0%, Gauteng 39.3% and Western Cape stands at 25.3%.
But what does ‘unemployed’ mean?
According to StatsSA, unemployed persons according to the official definition are those (aged 15–64 years) who: were not employed in the reference week; actively looked for work or tried to start a business in the four weeks preceding the survey interview; and were available for work, i.e. would have been able to start work or a business in the reference week; or had not actively looked for work in the past four weeks, but had a job or business to start at a definite date in the future and were available.
According to the expanded definition, unemployed persons (aged 15–64 years) who: were not employed in the reference week; and were available to work but did not look for work either because they were discouraged from looking for work or did not look for work for other reasons other than discouragement.
As unemployment rate gets the spotlight, it also worth looking at employment in the provinces.
The number of employed persons increased in seven provinces between Q1: 2023 and Q2: 2023.
Large employment increases were recorded in Limpopo (up by 80,000), Western Cape (up by 54,000), KwaZulu-Natal (up by 48,000) and Eastern Cape (up by 23,000). Employment losses were recorded in Free State (down by 59,000) and Northern Cape (down by 17,000) during the same period.
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