South Africa's Unemployment Rate Exceeds 33% in Q2

South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to more than 33% again in the second quarter, continuing a trend that has seen the number of unemployed people increase by more than 60% in a decade, according to official figures released Tuesday.

The unemployment rate reached 33.5% between April and June, up 0.6 points from the previous quarter, according to national statistics agency StatsSA.

Some 8.4 million people were unemployed in the second quarter, compared with 5.2 million a decade ago in 2014, the report said.

The unemployment rate reached 42.6% in the second quarter, up from 41.9% in the previous three months, the agency added. At 33.5%, South Africa’s official unemployment rate is close to the record 35.3% set in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The number of employees in the formal sector fell, but about 100,000 people found work in the informal sector during the year (+3.3%).

These new figures are the first to be published since the general elections in May, which focused on unemployment and deprived the African National Congress, which has been in power since the end of apartheid in 1994, of its majority.

Meantime, the elections led to the formation of a new coalition government that has made reviving the country's economy its priority.