Cape Town - THE Western Cape’s unemployment rate, despite an overheated shrinking labour pool, dipped to 25.2% during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, Statistics South Africa announced Tuesday morning, showing the province created 35 000 jobs on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
The province’s expanded unemployment rate is standing at 29%, while the statewide unemployment rate decreased by 0.8 of a percentage point to 34.5% in the same period. This stats shows that the Western Cape maintained the lowest unemployment rate in the country.
This is a significant improvement for the Western Cape when comparing it to the last quarter of 2021, when the unemployment rate stood at 28% and the expanded unemployment rate – which includes people who did not look for a job – at 30.4%.
This is a sign that the Western Cape fared better through the pandemic than all of its peers, said newly appointed MEC for finance and economic development, Mireille Wenger.
“This is very welcome news,” Wenger said Tuesday.
“We, however, know that there is much more work to do to claw back the jobs lost during the pandemic, and this will be my top priority.
“To do so, we need to make it easier for the private sector to create jobs; we need to attract investment, and we need to remove barriers to trade,” she said, adding that it is imperative to boost the province’s resilience.
Wenger previously told Weekend Argus she is on a quest to disrupt the status quo and reduce the province’s high unemployment rate.
“We obviously have to lower the unemployment rate because jobs give dignity, jobs are essential, and it’s a priority,” Wenger said at the time.
“Job creation is something I care about very deeply. I’m on the job to create jobs,” she said.