The North West provincial government has welcomed the latest figures of the third quarterly Labour Force Survey released by Statistics South Africa’s Statistician General Risenga Maluleke on Tuesday in Pretoria.
Maluleke announced that the country’s unemployment rate has dropped to 31.9% from 33.2% in the second quarter of this year.
“While this brings the number of employed people to 17.1 million, eight million other people eligible to work still remain jobless,” said Maluleke/.
In the North West, unemployment has dropped by two percentage points, with the latest stats showing that 42 000 new jobs were created in the province between July and September this year.
Despite these gains, the official unemployment rate for the province remains high, at 40.1% as per earlier 2025 data, and the expanded unemployment rate (which includes discouraged job seekers) remains above 50%.
Premier Lazarus Mokgosi has conceded that while the province is not out of the woods yet, the figures are encouraging.
“These figures are indicative of an administration hard at work to address the scourge of unemployment and poverty confronting the province.
I have been crisscrossing the province speaking to various enterprises to see how best we can turn the tide on high unemployment figures in the province, and I believe that our efforts are yielding desired results,” Mokgosi maintained.
The premier has however indicated that plans are underway to address the high unemployment rate in the province
“Early this year the province adopted the Growth and Development Strategy to drive economic recovery plans centred on infrastructure development, service delivery, investments and job creation,” remarked the premier.
Furthermore, Mokgosi said that efforts to create jobs in the province will be given impetus by the Provincial Mining Indaba and Investment Conference planned for early next year.
“We recently met with the cabinet where we tabled our efforts to lure investments and drive our economic recovery initiatives and President Cyril Ramaphosa gave us a thumbs up on these ambitious efforts while offering some counselling on how we can circumvent these challenges,” explained Mokgosi.
The premier has also maintained that the province has made some significant strides in deterring job losses in ferrochrome mines.
“All these efforts and many others will find expression through a jobs summit that is aimed at devising strategies on preserving the available jobs while creating new ones in various industries as envisioned in the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy,” concluded Mokgosi.
