Employees with a qualification below matric are most vulnerable to losing their jobs, Solidarity said on Monday.

The trade union said in a report that more than 65% of those who had lost their jobs had a qualification below matric while a further 26% had only matric.

By contrast, 5% of those who had lost their jobs had a tertiary qualification.

The report, compiled by Solidarity's research institute, said the latest figures from Statistics South Africa for the first quarter of 2009, indicated that almost 4,2-million South Africans were now unemployed.

This brought the official unemployment figure in South Africa to
23,5%.

According to Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans, the report paid particular attention to the latest trends in the number of job losses and the number of people leaving their jobs in South Africa.

"Of the current nearly 4,2-million unemployed people in South Africa, almost 32%, or 1,4-million, lost their jobs while a further almost 360 000, or 8,5%, left their jobs and are still not employed," Kleynhans said.

"More than 58% of the job losses recorded in the survey by Statistics SA were among men.

"In addition, nearly 69% of job losses were among those aged 15 to 34," Solidarity said.

The union's study also showed that more than 21% (nearly 291 000) of those who had lost their jobs had previously been employed in the trade sector, while nearly 282 000 of those who had lost their jobs had previously been employed in the construction sector.

Unemployment in terms of race was also included and analysed in the report.

Of the current 4,2-million unemployed people in South Africa, more than 1,1-million were black people who had lost their jobs in the past five years.

In the same category of people who had lost their jobs in the past five years, 182 000 were coloured people, 26 000 were Indian and 38 000 were white.

The study also found the number of white people losing their jobs was increasing sharply.

"The number of job losses in this community alone has increased by 26,6% from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009," Solidarity said.

If one considered the composition of unemployment, which consisted of five different categories, it showed that 38,3% of all the unemployed whites had lost their jobs, the trade union added.

By comparison, nearly 47,5% of all unemployed coloured people, 30,7% of unemployed black people and 37,7% of unemployed Indians had lost their jobs.

The report also found that more than 41% of those who left their jobs did so because of high levels of job satisfaction.

This, according to Solidarity, was shocking and disappointing.

"Job satisfaction is an element that can be tackled by employers and can be used to lower staff turnover," Kleynhans said.