The Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) said that it is deeply alarmed but not surprised by yesterday’s quarterly labour force survey (QLFS) for Q1 of 2025 stating that the country’s unemployment has increased by 1.0-percentage point to 32.9%.
The stats revealed that young people aged 15-34 make up 50,2% of the country’s working-age population, translating to approximately 20, 9 million individuals.
Within this cohort, the 15-24 age group, representing around 10,3 million individuals, faces the highest barriers to entering the workforce, with unemployment figures significantly outpacing that of older youth.
Speaking on YOU FM Newshour, MACUA’s Executive Director Christopher Rutledge said that the country’s unemployment remains amongst the highest globally, calling them catastrophic.
“Unemployment has reached catastrophic levels particularly within communities where mining operations occur.
The way that we got to that understanding is through our work with communities across South Africa who are faced with these problems with mining.
Often when the communities embark on protest to these mining companies dismiss their complaints,” said Rutledge.
Furthermore, Rutledge said they have held engagements with people residing near mining operations in the protest, regarding their circumstances.
“We’re constantly working with our rural mining communities like in Mononono (deep rural area in the Moses Kotane local Municipality in the North West) where MACUA has branches of close to 15 members with some having 200, 300 members.
But the minimum branch you must have is 50 members so those members are MACUA, and we obviously have a movement, we have regular meetings, we share information, we engage in campaigns together, so we are always in the community,” explained Rutledge.
While employment gains were recorded in Transport, Finance, and Utilities, job losses were registered in Trade, Construction, Private Households, Mining, and Community and Social Services.
The stats has also indicate that increases in employment were observed in Western Cape (49 000), Gauteng (9 000) and Free State (4 000), while decreases were observed in KwaZulu-Natal (104 000), Eastern Cape (83 000), North West (57 000), Limpopo (55 000), Mpumalanga (43 000) and Northern Cape (12 000).
