Bloomberg News reports that SA’s official unemployment rate in the third quarter declined to 32.9%, the third highest on a global list of 82 countries and the Eurozone.
The improvement means that SA’s jobless rate now trails Namibia and Nigeria, though some data are outdated. It held the record of the world’s worst unemployment rate from the second quarter of 2021. The jobless rate for people aged between 15 and 24, which includes school leavers and graduates of universities and training colleges, stands at 34.5%. Unemployment according to the expanded definition stands at 43.1%, which includes people who were available for work but not looking for a job. SA’s energy-intensive manufacturing sector was the biggest driver of job growth in the third quarter despite record power outages. The number of people employed by manufacturers rose by 123,000 to 1.63 million in the three months through September, Statistics SA indicated in a report released on Tuesday. The official jobless rate in SA has exceeded 20% for at least two decades. That’s largely due to sluggish economic growth, and strict labour laws and bureaucratic hurdles that have weighed on the ability of local companies to hire additional workers. Analysts also cite an education system that doesn’t provide adequate skills and apartheid-era spatial planning that makes it difficult for job seekers to enter and remain in the formal workforce. The governing ANC failed to meet its targeted unemployment rate of 14% by 2020. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is likely to win a second term as party leader, next month will be expected to champion job creation initiatives.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Prinesha Naidoo at Fin24
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