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South Africa’s unemployment increased 1.7 percentage points to 32.5% (7.2 million people) in the fourth quarter of 2020, representing the highest unemployment rate recorded in 12 years.
The number of unemployed people increased by 701 000 to 7.2 million in the final quarter of 2020 following an increase of 2.2 million people in the previous quarter.
According to the expanded definition of unemployment, however, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.5 percentage points to 42.6% in quarter four of 2020. This means 11.1 million people in the country are unemployed.
The expanded definition of unemployment refers to people who were available to work but did not look for work either because they are discouraged from looking for work or did not look for work for other reasons other than discouragement.
The number of discouraged work-seekers increased by 234 000 (up by 8.7%) and the number of people who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement decreased by 1.1 million between Q3 and Q4 of 2020.
The increase in the unemployment rate coincided with the easing of lockdown restrictions which allowed for travelling and allowed for people to actively look for employment compared to the second quarter of 2020 when the country was under a hard lockdown which prevented movement.
Of the 15 million people who were employed in quarter four of 2020, almost eight out of ten people (78.3%) were expected to work during the national lockdown by the companies or organisations they work for.
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