South African trade union, the United Association of South Africa (UASA), released a statement after Stats SA released its own Quarterly Employment Statistics survey. UASA says more jobs are lost than are created, based on Stats SA’s survey, which showed that 94 000 jobs were lost between December 2021 and December 2022. Total employment in the formal, non-agricultural sector increased by only 48 000 in the fourth quarter of 2022. A spokesperson for UASA said, “In an actively industrialised country like ours, an unemployment rate of 32.7% is surreal and unsustainable”.
