South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to 27.1 percent of the labour force in the third quarter of the year, from 26.6 percent in the second quarter and the highest in 13 years, data from the statistics office showed on Tuesday.
In its quarterly labour force survey which polls households, Statistics South Africa said this amounted to 5.873 million people without jobs in the third quarter compared with 5.634 million previously.
The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, was slightly lower at 36.3 percent in the third quarter, from 36.4 percent in the second three months of 2016.