South Africa: The Premier of the Free State Province, Hon. SH Ntombela welcomes the unemployment statistics for the first quarter as issued by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA).
The latest unemployment figures are an indication that the economic recovery plans, which are implemented by the provincial government as a response to the economic challenges presented by, amongst others, the COVID-19 pandemic, are bearing fruits.
These plans were intended to revive our provincial economy and respond decisively to the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
These figures can be summarised as follows:
The Free State’s official unemployment rate decreased by 5.6 percentage points from 36.7% in 2021: Q4 to 31.1% in 2022: Q1.
The rate of unemployment amongst women also decreased by 4.0 percentage points, from 40.3% in 2021: Q4 to 36.3% in 2022: Q1, while the unemployment rate among men declined by 6.9 percentage points, from 34.0% in 2021: Q4 to 27.1% in 2022: Q1.
The number of unemployed in Free State decreased on a quarter-to-quarter basis by 69 000 people (or -16.4%), which was mainly driven by new entrants.
“Whilst we welcome and appreciate the positive improvements we have made as a province in our fight against unemployment, we remain concerned by the persistently high unemployment rates amongst the young people of our province, particularly considering that our province is a youthful province. We will place much more focus on fighting youth unemployment, and we are confident that our economic recovery plan will yield positive results,” Premier Ntombela said.
The Premier thanked all social partners in the province and reiterated the call by the provincial government to forge a social impact which will ensure that the resilience demonstrated by the provincial economy in the first quarter of 2022 is sustained.