PRETORIA: South Africa’s unemployment rate struck a record high of 30.8 per cent in the third quarter, a big jump from the previous quarter when figures were distorted by lockdown restrictions that prevented people from job-hunting, the statistics agency said on Thursday.
The agency only classifies people as unemployed if they are actively looking for work, which meant the unemployment rate was artificially low at 23.3 per cent in the April-June quarter compared to 29.1 per cent in the third quarter of last year.
Africa’s most industrialised economy has long suffered from extremely high levels of unemployment, trapping millions in poverty and contributing to stark inequalities that persist more than two decades after the end of apartheid in 1994.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has put job creation at the heart of a plan to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Indeed the 30.8 per cent is the highest we have recorded,” Statistician General Risenga Maluleke told a news conference. The figure was the highest since the survey began in 2008.
“What has actually lifted the unemployment rate? ... It’s largely the number of people who were seated (without work), and had reasons relating to COVID in the main, who came out and started to actively look for employment,” Maluleke said. Statistics South Africa put the number of unemployed at 6.5 million people in the third quarter, compared to 4.3 million in the previous three months. — Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
