The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry says its concerned by the increase in the official unemployment figure to 25.3% in the first quarter of 2012.
Statistics South Africa says 75,000 people lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2012.
Sacci's Peggy Drosky says the figures indicate that South Africa urgently needs business friendly regulations to improve the competitiveness of local business.
She says the current set of legislative amendments before parliament largely introduces additional costs and burdens to business that would ultimately reduce future sustainable employment creation.
"We have this objective of creating 5 million jobs over a number of years and with the increase in the level of unemployment that target is moving further and further away from us. The unemployment figures is a concern for another reason in that the more people we have got unemployed, the more people have to go on social security and that is an added cost to the system" Drosky said.
