South Africa’s unemployment rate fell to 26.7 percent of the labour force in the fourth quarter of last year from 27.7 percent in the third quarter, the statistics office said on Tuesday.

In its quarterly labour force survey, which polls households, Statistics South Africa said this amounted to 5.9 million people without jobs in the three months to end December, compared with 6.2 million people previously.

The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, fell to 36.3 percent in the fourth quarter, from 36.8 percent in the previous quarter.