A Pretoria based agency, Statistics SA, has reported that employment fell by 3.6 percent in the third quarter and 484,000 jobs were lost. The official rate of unemployment went up from 23.6 percent in the previous quarter to 24.5 percent this quarter.
Jobs in the manufacturing sector fell by 8 percent as 150,000 people lost their jobs whereas 110,000 jobs were lost in the wholesale and retail trade sectors, a fall of 3.7 percent.
283,000 jobs were cut in the formal sector without including agriculture. The figure stood at 116,000 for the informal sector. 57,000 jobs were lost in agriculture, and as many as 28,000 jobs were lost in private households. An astounding 510,000 people were amongst those who were not economically active, mainly comprising of workers who had lost hope of acquiring any job.
The largest number of jobs went down by 234,000 in the Gauteng province whereas Kwazulu-Natal was almost stable in terms of employment.
The agency said that absorption rate in the labor market fell by 1.7 percentage points to stand at 41.3 percent while the labor force participation rate fell by 1.5 percentage points to 54.8 percent.
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