South Africa’s unemployment rate increased to 25% in the first quarter of 2011, from 24% in the final quarter of last year, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) reported in its ‘Quarterly Labour Force’ survey, which was released on Tuesday.

The number of unemployed grew by 227 000 quarter-on-quarter to 4,36-million, while discouraged work-seekers increased by 73 000 the three months from January to March.

Employment fell by 14 000 between the fourth quarter and the first quarter of 2011, with an increase of 56 000 jobs in the formal non-agriculture sector, a loss of 46 000 jobs in the informal non-farming sector and a loss of 24 000 farming jobs.

Most of the jobs were lost in the transport sector, which accounted for 34 000 job losses, followed by 25 000 jobs in the construction industry.

There has been an increase of 37 000 in the finance sector, 20 000 jobs in manufacturing and 15 000 in the mining industry.

Job losses were experienced in most provinces, except Gauteng, the Western Cape and Mpumalanga, Stats SA reported.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, with only 40,6% of its population, aged between 15 to 64 years, employed.

Mike Schussler of Economists.co.za tells Engineering News Online that 40,6% is a “significant concern” and the employment-to-population ratio was the one of the lowest in the world. “This requires drastic action,” he added.

“This survey points out that it is not just a high unemployment rate, but that there are not enough jobs available in the country,” Schussler said.

This finding is echoed by the International Labour Organisation’s ‘Global Employment Trends 2011: The challenge of a jobs recovery,’ report, released in January: “Many economies are simply not generating sufficient employment opportunities to absorb growth in the working-age population.”

Nedbank’s economic unit said that the first-quarter employment figures were disappointing and underlined the hesitant nature of the economic recovery.

“This, together with lingering concerns about power and transport infrastructure constraints, and ample spare capacity will contain the pace of employment creation, keeping the unemployment rate high. We still expect the Reserve Bank to delay the first interest rate hike until early 2012.”

The government has said it aims to create five-million new jobs by 2020.