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No jobs for 5 million people

Cape Town - The unemployment rate rose to 25.2% of the labour force in the first quarter of 2014 from 24.1% in the fourth quarter, Statistician General Pali Lehohla said on Monday.

The decrease in employment meant that unemployment figures rose by 1.1 percentage points from quarter-to-quarter, according to the quarterly labour force survey.

This amounted to 5.067 million people without work in the first quarter, up from 4.83 million in the previous three months.

Lehohla said the decline from the last three months of last year to the first quarter of this year stood at 122 000.

"The bulk of [job] losses were in the informal sector," he said.

Employment in the formal sector remained largely stable, with 10.8 million people employed.

"The largest level of participation was in the Western Cape," he said.

"Over the same period, the absorption rate decreased by 0.5 of a percentage point to 41.8% and the number of discouraged work-seekers increased by 154 000."

The year-on-year picture looked better with employment rising by 496 000.

The trade sector contributed the most to the rise in employment with 154 00 jobs being created, followed by community and social services at 132 000 work opportunities.

"Employment has recovered to levels observed before the recession in 2008," a Statistics South Africa document read.

"However, the proportion of those employed among the working age population is still lower than was observed before the recession."

The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, was at 35.1% in the first quarter from 34.0% previously.

- Sapa with Reuters

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