(Photo by Gallo Images/Darren Stewart)
South Africa’s unemployment rate retreated for the second quarter in a row, because 648 000 jobs were added to the country’s labour market.
According to new data from Statistics South Africa, the country’s unemployment rate fell to 33.9% of the labour force in the second quarter of 2022, from 34.5% the previous quarter.
The consecutive decline in the country’s ultra-high unemployment rate comes after it hit record levels during the six quarters prior to this year — a result of Covid-19’s economic onslaught, which saw 2.2 million jobs lost in the first three months of the pandemic.
The decline in the unemployment rate has bucked analysts’ expectations, which put it slightly higher compared to the first quarter of the year. Consensus was for the rate to hit 34.7%, while Investec was expecting it to be slightly higher at 35.4%.
These expectations were based on weak data indicating that South Africa’s GDP will have contracted in the second quarter of 2022, as the economy reeled from the effect of April’s flooding in KwaZulu-Natal and continued load-shedding.
According to Stats SA, there were 15.6 million employed people in the second quarter of 2022, up from 14.9 million. The biggest job gains were recorded in community and social services, trade, finance and construction.
The expanded unemployment rate — which is a better indicator of the health of South Africa’s labour market, because it counts workers who have given up on the job search — also fell in the second quarter to 44.1%, from 45.5%.
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