South Africa's unemployment rate decreased

Statistics South Africa has released the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) data for Q4: 2022, which show a slight decrease in the country’s unemployment rate.

The official unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage point in the fourth quarter of 2022, from 32.9% in the third quarter to 32.7%.

According to the extended definition of unemployment, the unemployment rate fell by 0.5 percentage point to 42.6% in Q4:2022 compared to Q3:2022.

According to the poll results, 169,000 jobs were created during the third and fourth quarters of 2022. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the total number of people employed was 15.9 million.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the number of jobless people climbed by 28,000 to 7.8 million.

The number of persons who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement climbed by 95,000 to 13.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, while discouraged job searchers declined by 151,000, resulting in a net fall of 57,000 in the not economically active population.

According to Stats SA, the working-age population rose by 141,000 (or 0.3%) between the third and fourth quarters of 2022. The working-age population rose by 574,000, or 1.4%, between Q4: 2021 and Q4: 2022.

Special tabulations were performed to investigate movements across labour market statuses in order to better explain the observed substantial changes in key labour market variables between Q3: 2022 and Q4: 2022.

Between the two quarters, a considerable number of people migrated from the “not economically active” group to the “employed” and “unemployed” categories, resulting in a 0.2 percentage point fall in the unemployment rate to 32.7%.

Industry performance

Banking (+103,000), private homes (+54,000), trade (+52,000), and transportation (+43,000) were the industries with the most employment growth.

Meanwhile, employment losses in Community and Social Services (-122,000), Agriculture (-12,000), and Construction have been reported (-12 ,000).

During the third and fourth quarters of 2022, the official sector added 143,000 jobs, while the informal sector shed 15,000 jobs, according to Stats SA.

During Q3: 2022 and Q4: 2022, the number of employed people grew in five provinces.

The Western Cape (+167,000), North West (+23,000), Eastern Cape (+20,000), and Northern Cape (+12,000) also had significant gains in employment.

Over the same time period, employment was lost in Limpopo (-20,000), Gauteng (-18,000), Mpumalanga (-13,000), and Free State (-3,000).

The Western Cape saw the greatest quarter-to-quarter shift in employment, with a 6.9% rise.

Employment increased the most in Gauteng (+381,000), the Western Cape (+333,000), Mpumalanga (up 134,000), Limpopo (+133,000), and the Eastern Cape (+132,000) compared to Q4: 2021.

Northern Cape had the most year-on-year percentage change in employment with a 27.0% rise, followed by Western Cape and Mpumalanga with 14.7% and 12.7% increases, respectively.