Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA, writes that agriculture is generally viewed as one of the sectors that still has the potential to create more employment in SA.
Last week, Stats SA released its Quarterly Labour Force Survey data for the second quarter of 2025, which gives insights about agricultural jobs. The data showed that farm jobs declined mildly from the first quarter of this year by 3% to 906,000 in the second quarter. The decline was seen mainly in the livestock, some field crops, and aquaculture sectors. This could be linked to specific challenges those industries were facing, particularly the foot-and-mouth disease affecting cattle farming. Delays in the harvesting of some summer crops might have weighed on employment conditions. But there was some encouragement in that, from an annual perspective, overall farm employment was up 1% from the second quarter of 2024. The only subsectors with lower employment levels compared to a year ago were aquaculture, forestry and organic fertiliser production.
The annual uptick was consistent with the robust production in field crops and horticulture. The employment of 906,000 people was far above the long-term average level of 799,000 jobs, signalling that while the sector faced challenges, employment remained at encouraging levels. From a regional perspective, the Western Cape, Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng were the provinces that registered quarterly job losses, while the rest saw mild quarterly job gains. Sihlobo doubts that significant losses will be experienced as the better harvest in the various labour-intensive subsectors provides some cushion. Also, trade difficulties are concentrated on the US market, and not across all of SA’s agricultural export markets.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Wandile Sihlobo at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)
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