South Africa’s quarterly employment gain has left the country with fewer people working than at the start of the year, while the number unemployed or in the potential labour force has reached about 13.2 million.
Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, released on Tuesday, showed that employment increased by 101,000 to 16.8 million between July and September. But the number of unemployed people also rose, by 97,000 to 8.6 million, pushing the official unemployment rate up to 33.7% from 33.6%.
A further 4.6 million people were counted in the potential labour force, which includes those available for work but not searching, and those searching but not currently available. Combined with official unemployment, they accounted for 44% of the extended labour force, up from 43.8% in the previous quarter.
Economist Duma Gqubule said this broader measure, known as LU3, better reflected the scale of South Africa’s jobs crisis. Counting only people actively looking for work, he argued, overlooked those who had abandoned a search they could no longer sustain.
“People can’t search for jobs that don’t exist,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
He described the unemployment situation as a “calamity” and cautioned against interpreting one quarter’s employment increase as evidence of a recovery.
“We’d have to see this thing confirmed over a few quarters to say that the economy has turned.”
The latest gain followed employment losses of 345,000 in the first quarter and 16,000 in the second. Gqubule put the net loss since the end of 2025 at about 260,000 jobs, even after the third-quarter increase.
The official unemployment rate has risen in each quarter of 2026. It stood at 31.4% at the end of last year, before increasing to 32.7% in the first quarter and 33.6% in the second.
In the latest quarter, the labour force grew by 198,000, faster than the increase in employment. More people were working, but more were also looking for work without finding it.
Gqubule said the economy needed to generate enough employment both for people entering the labour market and for those already unemployed. A quarterly increase was insufficient if it failed to make sustained inroads into that backlog.
The formal sector accounted for the employment gains, adding 268,000 jobs to reach 12.3 million. Much of that increase was offset by losses elsewhere: informal employment fell by 98,000 and the household sector lost 68,000 jobs.
Finance recorded the largest industry gain, adding 111,000 jobs, followed by manufacturing with 33,000 and mining with 31,000. Private households lost 68,000 jobs, agriculture shed 34,000 and construction lost 8,000.
The figures show changes in the number of people employed in each sector. They do not establish whether workers who lost informal or household jobs moved into the formal-sector positions recorded during the quarter.
For young people, the slight improvement in the unemployment rate came without an increase in employment.
The number of employed people aged 15 to 34 fell by 5,000, while the number of unemployed young people decreased by 23,000. Their unemployment rate eased by 0.1 percentage points to 47.3%, leaving about five million unemployed.
The youth labour force therefore contracted. The lower rate did not reflect more young people finding work, and almost half of young labour-force participants remained unemployed.
People who stop looking for work also fall outside the official unemployment count. The number of discouraged job seekers increased by 70,000 during the quarter to about 3.7 million.
They form part of the potential labour force: people available to work who are not searching because they see little prospect of finding employment.
Gqubule argued that the expense of searching was another barrier for people already without an income.
Separate Stats SA price data showed that transport costs rose sharply during the period. Annual consumer inflation was 4.5% in September, while transport prices were 10.8% higher than a year earlier and minibus taxi fares had risen by 13.8%.
Those increases add to the cost of commuting and travelling in search of employment. The labour force survey does not establish how much they contributed to people abandoning their search.
Employment gains were uneven across provinces. The Western Cape added 48,000 jobs, North West 45,000, the Eastern Cape 36,000 and Gauteng 25,000. Employment declined by 34,000 in the Free State and 30,000 in Mpumalanga.
The survey also tracks people who are employed but need and are available for more working hours. The combined rate of unemployment and time-related underemployment eased by 0.1 percentage points to 36.5%.
Stats SA’s broadest measure of labour underutilisation, which brings together unemployment, time-related underemployment and the potential labour force, remained at 46.3%.
Gqubule argued that political parties had failed to offer a credible route to full employment, warning against accepting persistent mass joblessness as inevitable.
“We must never normalise this unemployment,” he said.