Africa’s second largest economy, South Africa has reported that its unemployment rate rose to 26.7 percent of the labour force in the first quarter of this year up from 24.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015.
According to the report, about 5.714 million people without jobs in the first quarter compared with 5.2 million previously. The report also has an expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, was at 36.3 percent in the first three months of the year, versus 33.8 percent previously.
Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria reported an unemployment rate of about 10.4 percent as at Q4 2015 and under employment rate of about 18.7 percent in the same quarter. Nigeria’ changed its method for calculating unemployment rate in 2015 after it concluded that artisans, street hawkers and small businesses with revenues of less than N18,000 monthly are employed. Analysts believe, the rate may have been above 30% if they used the prior methodology.
