A total of 22,000 jobs have been created between the second and third quarters of this year, Statistics SA said on Thursday.
Statistician general Pali Lehohla, presenting the quarterly labour force survey’s results in Pretoria, said the construction industry was the biggest driver of employment between the two quarters.
“Construction, quarter-on-quarter, is 99,000 [jobs created] and year-on-year, 135,000,” he said.
“You can see that… where jobs have been created substantially is in construction. So construction has become somewhat over a period of time up to now the main creator of jobs in South Africa.”
The most jobs lost quarter-on-quarter was in private households, which shed 110,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percent to 25.4 percent, while the expanded unemployment rate was 35.8 percent, an increase of 0.2 percent.
Unemployed persons were those aged 15 to 64 years of age actively looking for work or who tried starting a business in the weeks preceding Stats SA’s survey.
The expanded unemployment rate included those no longer actively searching for work.
Source : Sapa /aw/jje/lp/jk
