Households employ 49,000 fewer people, overall unemployment rises to 29%

Mining, transport and financial sectors also cut jobs

30 July 2019 - 12:22
By timeslive
Quarterly Labour Force Survey, July 30 2019
Image: StatsSA Quarterly Labour Force Survey, July 30 2019

There are 49,000 fewer people employed in domestic environments while the beleaguered mining sector is among the industries to have shed thousands of jobs.

This is according to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey released by Statistics South Africa on Tuesday.

Overall, the unemployment rate worsened from 27,6% in the first quarter of 2019 to 29% in the second quarter.

The report states: "The number of employed persons increased in six of the 10 industries, with the largest increases recorded in trade (84,000), community and social services (48,000), construction (24,000) and manufacturing (9,000). However, employment losses were recorded in private households (49,000), transport (42,000), mining (36,000) and finance and other business services (21,000)."

By job categories, the largest increase was observed in Manager occupations (up by 64,000), followed by those in Clerical occupations (up by 29,000) and Sales and services (up by 20,000).

Professional occupations (44,000) recorded the largest employment losses, followed by Domestic worker (19,000) and Elementary (16,000) occupations. Technician occupations recorded the lowest decrease of 12,000 jobs.

The Eastern Cape has the highest unemployment rate (35.4%), while the North West recorded the highest expanded unemployment rate (46.6%).