Unemployment rate climbs to 33.2%
Statistics South Africa announced the Quarterly Labour Force Survey on Tuesday, indicating a rise in the unemployment rate of 0.3%.
The Statistician General, Risenga Maluleke, said 140,000 more people are unemployed compared to the first quarter of this year.
"In terms of the movements of employment, we can see that in the last quarter we had lost 291,000 jobs and we have gained 19,000 jobs straight to 16.8 million.
"Eight-point-four million (8.4 million) of those that are not employed, but indicated that they had been looking for employment a week prior to our interviews, represents the unemployment rate of 33.2% which has gone up by 0.3 of a percentage point."
Maluleke, however, said that this number needs to be placed in context.
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He said of the 41.8 million people in the working age of 15 to 64 years, only 25.2 million are in the labour force.
The not Economically Active group represents 16.6 million people, 3.4 million of whom are discouraged work seekers.
Maluleke says the other 13,2 million are made up of students, homemakers, those who are too old or too young to work, and people with an illness or disability.
"The students, of course, take a larger chunk and of course we are seeing changes," said Maluleke.
"We have seen the movements from the previous quarter. Students have gone up by 151,000; the discouraged work seekers have gone down by 28,000 and indeed the homemakers have gone up by 127,000."
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