South Africa’s unemployment rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 32.5 percent of the labour force in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with the third, the national statistics agency said on Tuesday.
The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people discouraged from searching for jobs and those with other reasons for not searching such as restrictions relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, however dipped by half a percentage point to 42.6 percent, Statistics South Africa said.
“The number of employed persons increased by 333,000 to 15 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the number of unemployed persons also increased by 701,000 to 7.2 million compared to the third quarter of 2020,” it said in its latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS).
“The movement was proportionately more towards the unemployed than for the employed, which resulted in a significant increase of 1.7 percentage points in the official unemployment rate to 32.5 percent – the highest since the start of the QLFS in 2008.”
“There seems to be some relationship between the level of education and reduction in pay/salary. Those with higher levels of education had higher chances of receiving a full salary than those with lower levels of education in both (the third and fourth quarters).”