South Africa could shed nearly half a million jobs in the next 18 months, JSE-listed Adcorp said on Wednesday, as it reported a third consecutive month of job losses in July.

This comes after South Africa's recent loss of almost a million jobs during the recent global recession, after which a slight upturn in employment numbers were detected. But Adcorp now expects a massive 468 192 jobs to be lost in the remaining months of 2011 and into 2012.

The index showed that employment numbers during July slumped by 0.4%, a statistic equivalent to yearly losses of 270 504 permanent and 79 380 temporary workers.

Adcorp labour market analyst Loane Sharp said that employment declined by 7.7% in the mining sector, and by 8.6% in the manufacturing sector, despite export prices for commodities and basic beneficiated manufactured products increasing.

Meanwhile, the index also showed that government employment continued to rise by 1.4% as did ‘unofficial’ jobs, which grew at a yearly rate of 191 124 during July.

“The public sector now accounts for all the job creation in our economy in 2011, while the growth in unofficial employment - coupled with the decline in official employment - reinforces a trend that has been in evidence since as far back as January 2000,” said Sharp.

According to Statistics South Africa’s second-quarterly Labour Force Survey, unemployment climbed to 25.7%, which is an increase of 0.7 percentage points from the 25% unemployment rate in the first quarter of the year.

Manufacturing accounted for 68 000 job losses in the second quarter, followed by mining, which shed 31 000 jobs.