Three months after the nationwide lockdown was implemented, the unemployment rate has risen from 29.1% to 30.1%, the highest its been in a decade, says Statistics South Africa’s latest report.
According to the report, the number of unemployed people has increased to 7.1 million, while those lucky enough to still be employed has decreased to 16.4 million.
According to South African Markets insights, the unemployed and employed numbers per province look like this:
Employed Unemployed
- Gauteng: 5 098 000 2 271 000
- KwaZulu-Natal: 2 664 000 890 000
- Western Cape: 2 518 000 665 000
- Limpopo: 1 400 000 421 000
- Eastern Cape: 1 384 000 904 000
- Mpumalanga: 1 244 000 629 000
- North West: 992 000 401 000
- Free State: 785 000 423 000
- Northern Cape: 335 000 123 000
Since the start of the lockdown, which was implemented on 26 March, a number of businesses had to close their doors, leaving many South Africans without an income.
Many large South African companies such as Cell C, Edcon and Barloworld also launched retrenchment packages in recent weeks.
“It is expected that further job shedding will be transpired toward the end of the first quarter amid the declaration of the pandemic as a national disaster on 15 March 2020,” FNB said in an economic note.
