Staff Reporter
The official unemployment rate in the Free State dropped 1.4 percentage points from 38.1 percent to 36.7 percent between the third and fourth quarters of 2021, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has revealed.
This means the province now has over 727 000 people who are employed compared to the third quarter which had 720 000 people.
The Free State has a population of about 2.9 million people.
In its Quarterly Labour Force Survey, Stats SA said the expanded unemployment figure for the province — which includes discouraged jobseekers — fell by 1.6 percentage points from 45.8 percent in the third quarter to 44.2 percent in the fourth quarter.
The Free State now has the third highest official unemployment rate after the Eastern Cape which stands at 45 percent and Mpumalanga with 39.7 percent.
Statistician General Risenga Maluleke said in the report the country’s unemployment rate now stands at 35.3 percent.
“The official unemployment rate increased by 0.4 of a percentage point to 35.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the third quarter,” said Maluleke.
“The official unemployment rate increased in five provinces,” he added.
The largest increases were recorded in KwaZulu-Natal (up by 3.7 percentage points), followed by Mpumalanga (up by 2.2 percentage points), Western Cape (up by 1.7 percentage points) and Limpopo (up by 1.4 percentage points).
Nationally, the working-age population increased by 143 000 or 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the third quarter of the same year.
Compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, the working-age population increased by 578 000 or 1.5 percent.
The number of employed persons increased by 262 000 to 14.5 million in the fourth quarter of last year.
The number of unemployed persons increased by 278 000 to 7.9 million compared to the third quarter of last year, resulting in an increase of 540 000 or 2.5 percent in the number of people in the labour force.
The number of discouraged work-seekers decreased by 56 000 or 1.4 percent.
Most jobs were created in trade and personal services, nationally, where employment increased by 118 000 and 129 000, respectively.
The mining, agriculture and community and social services also added jobs, while manufacturing, construction, utilities and transport reduced employment.
The Nedbank economic unit said in a commentary that the increase in community and social services could be a reflection of a spike in temporary jobs to manage the municipal elections in November last year.
It said employment in the domestic trade sector was lifted by increased activity in the hotel and tourism industries due to more lenient lockdown restrictions.
According to Nedbank, the annual numbers suggest that the economic recovery has not been strong enough to support employment creation.
“Most of the key indicators suggest that the economy is slowly mending,” it said.
“However, the pace of recovery has been too slow to translate into sustainable employment creation.
“Unfortunately, the outlook for the job market remains uncertain.
“The worst of the pandemic seems to be over, which implies that lockdown disruptions would be minimal.
“This, together with ongoing economic reforms, should lift business confidence, encourage investment spending and ultimately support employment growth.
“However, the unemployment rate will remain structurally high in the short term because the economy is still facing many long-term challenges that are hindering jobs growth.”
Nedbank said fundamental structural deficiencies, such as electricity shortages and policy challenges, could take years to resolve and possibly limit growth in private sector investment.
“Employment by the government will be limited by significant budget constraints,” said the bank’s economic unit.
“A large number of discouraged workers will also increasingly return to the job market as economic activity improves.
“All these factors will keep the unemployment rate elevated throughout 2022.”