Highest unemployment rate since 2003

The results of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey by StatsSA are in, and the results are not good. In the first quarter of 2017, the unemployment rate was driven up to 27,7%, the highest unemployment rate since September 2003. It was reported that there was a growth in employment by 144,000 which was overwhelmed by the staggering 433,000 job-seekers.

The youth made up the majority of the 433 000 people who joined the ranks of the unemployed, approximately 58% were young people aged 15-34 increasing the youth unemployment rate by 1,6 percentage points to 38,6%.

Whilst the unemployment rate of those with an education of less than matric rose to 33,1% – 5,4% higher than the national average – graduates remained at an unemployment rate of 7,3%.

However the job market is not all gloom and doom, Career24’s report on online recruitment trends, noted that it is a supplier’s market with skilled, experienced and educated candidates are able to choose the roles and companies rather than vice versa.

Also, a list of the 25 jobs in South Africa with rarest skills was formulated by Adzuna. A “rareness factor” of the job skill was determined by gauging the difference between the skills most sought after by companies and the demand for those jobs by South African job seekers.

The bigger the gap between the demand of the skill by employers and the supply of skilled employees, the higher the rareness factor and the higher the job would rank on the list. The most sought after skills were deemed to be Java developers, financial accountants and developers – ie they had the highest rareness factor.

The full release on the Quarterly Labour Force Survey by StatsSA may be obtained here.