South Africa's unemployment rate rose to 24.5 percent in the third quarter, with manufacturing and retail jobs the worse hit, the government said on Thursday. The jobless rate rose from 23.6 percent in the second quarter, Statistics SA said. The manufacturing sector lost 150,000 jobs, or eight percent of the total employed in the sector, while the wholesale and retail trade lost 110,000 jobs in the three months to September.
But the figures mask the extent of South Africa's jobs problem as 510,000 people left the work force, meaning they are no longer counted among the unemployed, the agency said. Compared to the third quarter last year, about one million people have left the labour force, more than half of them people who gave up looking for work, it said. "These patterns suggest that there was a shift from employment into unemployment, discouragement and inactivity," Statistics SA said.
"They show the continued deterioration in the South African labour market resulting from the decline in employment for the third consecutive quarter," it added. South Africa has 31.2 million people of working age, but only 17 million of them are considered in the labour force. About 12.9 million of them actually have jobs, down 770,000 from the third quarter last year. The country is in its first recession since the end of apartheid, but even during years of economic growth South Africa has struggled to create enough jobs to make a dent in unemployment.