South Africa’s unemployment drops to 26.7% in Q4 2017

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Tuesday, that the unemployment rate in the country fell to 26.7 percent of the labour force in the fourth quarter of last year from 27.7 percent in the third quarter.

In its quarterly labour force survey, which polls households, Statistics South Africa said this amounted to 5.9 million people without jobs in the three months to end December, compared with 6.2 million people previously.

According to the report, “the working-age population grew by 152 000 or 0.4 percent while the labour force declined by 351 000 persons in the fourth quarter of 2017 compared to the third quarter of 2017. Both employment and unemployment decreased in Q4: 2017. This resulted in a decline in the unemployment rate by 1.0 percentage point to 26.7%, while the absorption rate declined by 0,2 of a percentage point to 43,1% and the labour force participation declined by 1,1 percentage points to 58,8% quarter-to-quarter..”

The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, fell to 36.3 percent in the fourth quarter, from 36.8 percent in the previous quatre.