South Africa’s official unemployment rate has increased yet again, to 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026, which means more than 8 million people are actively job-hunting.

The expanded unemployment rate, which includes those not actively looking for work and discouraged work seekers, now stands at 43.7%, or about 12 million South Africans of working age.

Youth unemployment is of particular concern, with over 4.7 million young people unemployed.

Seven out of ten sectors recorded net job losses in the first quarter, including significant losses in the community and social services industry. The construction, transport, finance, utilities and trade industries also saw job losses.

Net job gains were recorded in the agricultural, mining and manufacturing industries.

DA Leader Geordin Hill-Lewis has lamented these figures, saying that serious economic reform is urgently required.

“South Africa does not lack economic potential. It lacks political urgency.  Investors and businesses are still held back by red tape, unreliable basic services, failing ports and rail, and crime that makes it harder and more expensive to build, trade, transport goods, and employ people.”

He says that while the internal ANC crises affect their performance in national government, like Phala Phala and criminal infiltration, they remain distracted from reform, and South Africans are paying the price in lost wages, closed opportunities, and families left behind.

“The Democratic Alliance believes South Africa’s central national mission must be to get the economy growing and creating jobs. That requires urgent, practical reform. Economic reform has been too slow, too cautious, and too easily displaced by other political priorities.”

Other parties have also chimed in.

ActionSA MP Roger Solomons has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire all the GNU Ministers, who, he says, are responsible for South Africa’s current “job-destroying environment”.

“Two years into the Government of National Unity, South Africans are yet to see a coherent economic reform agenda capable of meaningfully addressing the unemployment crisis. ActionSA will therefore formally write to President Ramaphosa, urging him to take urgent and decisive action against those Ministers entrusted with enabling economic growth, investment and employment, but who continue to preside over economic decline and rising joblessness.”

Build One South Africa (BOSA) Leader Mmusi Maimane says the latest jobs report is a reflection of poor governance and government failure.

“It also highlights the fact that South Africa remains structurally unable to provide the economic incentives necessary for investment. Our economy, in its current form, is structurally flawed in its ability to create jobs and absorb the millions of South Africans who are desperate for work. Only through rigorous oversight, data-driven policy, and leadership that puts South Africans first can we unlock inclusive economic growth and real job creation.”

Meanwhile, the GOOD Party’s Secretary-General, Brett Herron, has called on the State to find the means to implement a basic income grant (BIG), to tackle poverty, pointing to the “hopelessly inadequate” R370 SRD grant.

“By the State’s own reckoning, the extreme poverty line (known as the Food Poverty Line), indicating the amount of money an individual needs to afford the minimum required daily energy, is R855 per person per month. That excludes people’s day-to-day needs for toiletries, cleaning materials, clothing, blankets, heating, bus tickets, etc.”

Herron says to meet its Constitutional requirements and fund a Basic Income Grant, the State must “trim fat, waste and corruption.”

“Three years ago, the GOOD Party funded economic research showing that it was within the State’s means to afford a R1000-a-month BIG. What was needed was a zero-based approach to budgeting: Instead of modelling next year’s budget on last year’s, and the year before that – going all the way back to Van Riebeeck – South Africa’s spending should be determined by its real-time priorities. The budget-making process should effectively start each year from scratch.”

COSATU’s Parliamentary Co-ordinator Matthew Parks says they will be making formal proposals on a stimulus package to mobilise every possible public and private financial resource to Nedlac and Parliament.

“Unemployment is the single greatest threat to the nation. It requires the same decisive and progressive response as was mobilised and led by President Cyril Ramaphosa during COVID-19. This is a ticking time bomb we dare not ignore.”