On Tuesday, Stats SA released the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2021, which showed that unemployment rose to a record high of 34.4%.
This is the highest rate recorded since the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) started in 2008.
There have been many indications that offices were slowly coming back to life over the past few months but Stats SA has now confirmed that more people were no longer working from home.
This was revealed in the Quarterly Labour Force Survey Results for the first quarter of 2021 on Tuesday.
This is the highest the figure has been since the start of the QLFS in 2008.
Joblessness has become a fixture of the South African economy. Understanding the patterns of who is out of work and for how long is key to designing policies to address the problem.
Several small gatherings, in line with COVID-19 regulations, were expected to take place around the country to highlight challenges such as unemployment which now sits at 32.5%.
According to Stats SA, South Africa has recorded its highest unemployment rate since 2008 at 32.5% in the fourth quarter of 2020.
While the Eastern Cape tops the expanded unemployment chart among all provinces, its neighbour, the Western Cape’s rate stood at 26.8% as the least affected by the crisis.
The Quarterly Labour Force Survey has shown that the number of employed persons increased by 333,000 to 15 million, the third-largest increase since the start of the survey in 2008.
While the results from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the fourth quarter of 2020 showed that the number of employed people increased to 15 million, it also showed that the number of unemployed people increased to 7.2 million.
The third quarter Labour Force Survey showed that the unemployment rate rose to 30.8% between July and September while the expanded definition increased to 43.1%.
While the country’s working-age population continued to grow, increasing by 585,000 or 1.5% in the third quarter, the job market continued to contract.
The expanded definition of unemployment increased by 1.1 percentage points to 43.1% in the third quarter of 2020 compared to quarter two.
Andrea Hartzenburg is one of 2.2 million people who've lost their jobs during the second quarter of this year.
National spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said that this was what happened when there was a government that was hellbent on implementing a framework of policies that did not place employment creation as a priority.
The president was responding to the data released by Stats SA, which revealed that South Africa's unemployment rate fell to 23.3% in the second quarter from 30.1% in the first quarter due to fewer people looking for work amid the nation's strict coronavirus lockdown.
Economic experts have criticised Stats SA’s decision to define the 2.2 million job losses during the second quarter as economically not active people.
