JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to 27.2 percent of the labour force in the second quarter from 26.7 percent in the first quarter, the statistics office said on Tuesday.

In its quarterly labour force survey, Statistics South Africa said the manufacturing sector saw the most job losses.

There were 6.1 million people without jobs in the three months to the end of June, compared with 6.0 million people in the first three months of the year, it said.

The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, rose to 37.2 percent in the second quarter from 36.7 percent in the previous quarter.

Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by James Macharia