TSHWANE, July 31 – The official unemployment rate in South Africa increased by 0.5 percentage points to 27. 2 percent of the labour force in the second quarter of 2018 compared with the first three months of the year, Statistician General Risenga Maluleke said on Tuesday.
Risenga released Statistics South Africa’s quarterly labour force survey which showed that the South African working-age population increased by 154,000 or 0.4 percent in the second quarter.
The unemployment rate edged up due to a decline of 90,000 in the number of people employed, and an increase of 102,000 in the number of people who became unemployed between the first and second quarters of 2018.
This was coupled with an increase in the number of discouraged work-seekers to 2, 9 during the period under review.Â
– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa
