Unemployment drops
- Published on 11 Feb 2015
- HR Pulse News Desk
Statistics SA’s quarterly labour force survey showed that the unemployment rate fell to 24.3% in the fourth quarter of last year from 25.4% in the third quarter.
This was the lowest level of unemployment since the fourth quarter of 2013, meaning that the number of people actively looking for jobs fell to 4.9-million from 5.1-million. Yet, Stats SA deputy director-general for social statistics Kefiloe Masiteng cautioned that some of the jobs created were driven by the seasonality associated with the festive season as evidenced in the sectors that created mainly "casual" jobs.
The jobs created in the fourth quarter were in agriculture (56,000), construction (53,000), and trade (50,000). Utilities, mining, and community and social services shed a combined 41,000 jobs between the third and fourth quarters of last year. The expanded unemployment rate, which takes into account people who are not actively looking for work, declined by 1.2 percentage points to 34.6%, or 8.1-million, in the fourth quarter.
