PRETORIA (Reuters) – South Africa’s unemployment rate fell slightly to 26.5 percent of the labour force in the fourth quarter of 2016, from 27.1 percent in the third quarter, data from the statistics office showed on Tuesday.
In its quarterly labour force survey, which polls households, Statistics South Africa said this amounted to 5.781 million people without jobs in the fourth quarter compared with 5.873 million previously.
The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, decreased to 35.6 percent in the fourth quarter, from 36.3 percent in the previous quarter.
(Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Tiisetso Motsoeneng)
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