Cape Town — Employment data shared by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) in its Quarterly Labour Force Survey for Q4: 2022 have revealed that the number of unemployed people in the country declined to a total of 7,753,000. This is a decrease of 0.5 of a percentage point to 42.6% in Q4:2022 in comparison to Q3:2022.
Meanwhile, the total of employed people across the country rose from 9,920,000 in September, 2022 to 9,968,000 in December 2022. Trade, business services and mining were cited as the largest contributors to job creation during the quarter.
According to SABC News, labour law expert Andrew Levy said: “If we have a look at the long term trend and we look at it since 2010 or 2012 – never mind the small fluctuations from year-to-year – the trend is down. There is no question that over the last decade, we have lost hundreds and thousands of jobs, unemployment has grown and it has grown very significantly. It’s a national disaster at the moment.”
The second half of 2022 saw a noticeable rise in the number of new jobs with Stats SA saying in a statement: “The results indicate that 169,000 jobs were gained between the third quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2022. The total number of persons employed was 15,9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. The number of unemployed persons increased by 28 000 to 7,8 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. The number of people who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement increased by 95 000 to 13,4 million. The discouraged work-seekers decreased by 151 000 in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter, resulting in a net decrease of 57 000 in the not economically active population.”
Additional data found that approximately 3,4 million (33,6%) out of 10,2 million young people aged 15-24 years were not in employment, education or training, that the graduate unemployment rate (10,6%) is 22,1 percentage points lower than the national official unemployment rate and that the unemployment rate among the Black African (36,8%) population group remains higher than the national average and other population groups.