Unemployment stats: Economic recovery depends on successful vaccine rollout
24 August 2021
The Stats SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) released today (24 August 2021) reveals that at 25.8%, the Western Cape continues to have the lowest official unemployment rate and at 29.1%, the Western Cape continues to have the lowest expanded unemployment rate in South Africa.
Encouragingly, we’ve seen a quarter-on-quarter growth of 49,000 jobs in agriculture, 19,000 jobs in construction and 11,000 jobs in transport.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown restrictions continue to have a major impact on the provincial economy and quarter-on-quarter 53,000 jobs were lost.
And, at the end of the day, we know that too many people, especially young people, have lost their jobs and their livelihoods since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.