South Africa Unemployment Rate
The share of people aged 15-64 who want a job and are actively looking, but can't find one.
33.0%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full South Africa economy15 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Unemployment Rate
Q3 2000 to Q2 2026
Source: FRED series LRUN64TTZAQ156S · seasonally adjusted, quarterly, ages 15-64.
South Africa Unemployment Rate in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In South Africa, the unemployment rate rose by 0.4pp over the year to Q2 2026, from 32.6% in Q2 2025.
It is the highest reading since Q4 2022.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 31.9% in Q4 2025 to 35.6% in Q4 2021.
Its average since Q3 2000 is 27.4%, and the latest reading is above that.
South Africa is 1st of 62 countries in our Unemployment Rate by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- FRED
- Series
- LRUN64TTZAQ156S
- Frequency
- Quarterly
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Seasonally adjusted
- Latest observation
- Q2 2026
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
This is the OECD's harmonised, seasonally adjusted series. Stats SA's official headline rate is not seasonally adjusted, so the two can differ.
Data refreshed 2026-10-28. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More South Africa indicators
Latest readings. Open any one for its full history.
Rankings
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