South Africa's unemployment rate increased by 0.5 of a percentage point to 27.6% for the first quarter of this year, Statistics South Africa's (Stats SA's) latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) shows.

The increase in the unemployment rate is attributable to a decline of 237 000 in the number of people in employment and an increase of 62 000 in the number of people who were unemployed between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019.