South Africa unemployment drops to 24 percent

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's unemployment rate fell to 24 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, but nearly half the 1.3-point drop came from discouraged workers leaving the labour force, officials said Tuesday. "The unemployment rate declined by 1.3 percentage points between the third and the fourth quarters of 2010," government statistics agency Statistics SA said in its quarterly labour force survey. "The number of unemployed persons decreased by 259,000 jobs between the third and fourth quarters, while the number of discouraged work-seekers increased by 117,000." The manufacturing and community and social services sectors led the rebound as the country posted its first growth in overall employment since the fourth quarter of 2009. The country has struggled to create jobs despite recovering in the third quarter of 2009 from its first recession since the end of apartheid in 1994. Unemployment poses the biggest challenge to the government of President Jacob Zuma, who is expected to devote much of his annual state of the nation address to the issue on Thursday. The official unemployment figure masks the extent of South Africa's joblessness problem, because so many people have given up looking for work and are no longer counted in the official labour force. The number of discouraged work-seekers increased 5.8 percent in the last three months of the year, bringing the total to almost 2.2 million, Statistics SA said. Including these discouraged workers, the unemployment rate would be 36 percent, though unofficial estimates put it at 40 percent or higher.