5.714 million people are now without jobs
It was not good for South Africa's economy this week when the data from the statistics office showed that the unemployment rate has risen to 26.7 per cent of the labour force in the first quarter of this year.
This is up from 24.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015.
In its quarterly labour force survey which polls households, Statistics South Africa said this amounted to 5.714 million people without jobs in the first quarter compared with 5.2 million previously.
Currently the economy is shedding jobs as companies struggle to operate in the low growth environment while more people are entering the labour market to look for jobs.
This, along with the fact that more people became of working age and started looking for jobs contributed to a higher unemployment rate.
SA’s working age is 15 years to 64 years. The working-age population increased by 159 000 to 36.4-million between the two quarters.
The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, was at 36.3 percent in the first three months of the year, versus 33.8 percent previously.
* In the meantime, Moody’s Investors Service recently announced it would keep the country’s credit rating unchanged.
Even though no junk status was announced, Moody’s altered its outlook from stable to negative, paving the way for the rating to be downgraded in the months ahead.
