South Africa unemployment highest in world, at over 34%      

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa. South Africa's unemployment figure is likely to deteriorate in the third quarter because the government tightened Covid-19 curbs in the face of a third wave of infections.

South Africa’s unemployment rate surged to the highest on a global list of 82 countries. 

The jobless rate rose to 34.4% in the second quarter from 32.6% in the three months to March, said Statistics South Africa.

The median of three economists’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey was 33.2%.

Unemployment, according to the expanded definition, which includes people who were available for work but not looking for a job, rose to 44.4% from 43.2% in the first quarter. 

While the unemployment rate is now the highest of the countries tracked by Bloomberg, the data from some of those nations is outdated. 

Covid curbs

The unemployment figure is likely to deteriorate in the third quarter because the government tightened Covid-19 curbs in the face of a third wave of infections, hindering efforts to revive an economy that shrank 7% last year. 

Rising joblessness could heap pressure on authorities to extend relief measures that would complicate efforts to stabilise public finances.

There was also an eruption of deadly riots in July in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, two key economic hubs, which claimed 354 lives and saw thousands of businesses looted and shuttered. 

The ability of South African companies to hire is undermined by an education system that does not provide adequate skills and by strict labour laws that make hiring and firing workers onerous. 

The apartheid-era strategy of placing so-called townships, where many Black citizens were compelled to live, on the periphery of cities also makes it difficult for residents to access the formal jobs market.