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Cape Town – All eyes will be on Statistics South Africa this morning when the entity will announce South Africa’s job statistics for the third quarter of 2017 at around 11:00 in Cape Town.
The quarterly labour force survey, as it is called, reflects the growth in employment numbers across various sectors in the economy.
In the first quarter of this year, unemployment in the country hit the highest levels since 2003, coming in at 27.7% and remained unchanged in the second quarter.
The expanded unemployment rate - which includes those who wanted to work but did not look for work - amounts to 9.3 million people, or 36.4%.
READ: Youth unemployment in SA a national crisis - economist
Even grimmer is South Africa’s unemployment rate among the youth, which amounted to over 67% in the previous two quarters.
Stanlib economist Kevin Lings called youth unemployment in South Africa a “national crisis”, which could have serious political, economic and social ramifications.
South Africa’s unemployment rate counts as ome of the highest in the world and is the most severe of all African countries.
Despite a number of economic policies geared towards job creation, government has not succeeded in making a significant dent in unemployment and the 6% unemployment target set out in the National Development Plan (NDP) by 2030 seems like a pipe dream.
When President Jacob Zuma assumed office in May 2009, he undertook to create five million new jobs and reduce unemployment to 15% by the end of 2020 through the New Growth Path, which was officially adopted in 2011.
Instead, the unemployment rate has been rising steadily for the past nine years.
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