South Africa’s official unemployment rate climbed to 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, with the number of unemployed people rising by 345,000 to 8.5 million, raising fresh questions about the country’s ability to create jobs despite years of political and public pressure against foreign workers accused of taking employment opportunities from citizens.

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey released by Statistics South Africa shows that unemployment increased by 0.9 percentage points from 32.7% in the first quarter, marking another deterioration in an already severe employment crisis.

The increase came as the number of employed people fell by 16,000 to 16.7 million, while the labour force expanded by 329,000, or 1.3%. In other words, significantly more people were available for work than the economy was able to absorb.

The latest figures also expose the limits of reducing South Africa’s unemployment crisis to competition from foreign nationals.

South Africa has seen political campaigns and sometimes violent attacks against migrants and foreign-owned businesses, with groups accusing foreigners of taking jobs, operating businesses that should belong to South Africans and placing pressure on already scarce economic opportunities.

The argument has been particularly strong in sectors such as informal trading, construction, domestic work, hospitality and small businesses, where South Africans and migrants often compete for low-skilled employment and customers.

Yet the second-quarter figures show employment losses across major parts of the formal economy. Community and social services shed 57,000 jobs, mining lost 26,000, while agriculture and manufacturing each recorded declines of 15,000.

At the same time, employment gains in trade, construction and finance, which added 70,000, 39,000 and 11,000 jobs respectively, were insufficient to offset the losses elsewhere.

The structure of the labour market is also changing. Formal-sector employment declined by 41,000 and household-sector employment fell by 9,000, while informal-sector employment increased by 34,000.

This shift is significant because it suggests that even where employment opportunities are emerging, they are not necessarily being created in the more stable formal economy.

The latest deterioration follows an already difficult first quarter. Between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, unemployment rose from 31.4% to 32.7%, while the number of unemployed people increased by 301,000 to 8.1 million. Employment fell by 345,000 to 16.8 million during the same period.

South Africa has therefore moved from 31.4% unemployment at the end of 2025 to 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, meaning the official unemployment rate has increased by 2.2 percentage points in just two quarters.

The trajectory raises a fundamental question about the effectiveness of attempts to address unemployment primarily through restricting foreign participation in the labour market.

If foreigners are blamed for taking jobs from South Africans, removing or excluding them should, in theory, create space for citizens to enter those jobs. But the latest labour-market data show that unemployment can continue rising even amid sustained political pressure over migration.

The figures point instead to a much larger structural problem: the South African economy is not generating enough employment to absorb the expanding labour force.

The 329,000 increase in the labour force during the second quarter is particularly important. It means that the number of people available and seeking work grew substantially, while total employment actually declined.

That imbalance is at the centre of South Africa’s unemployment challenge.

The issue is not simply how many jobs are occupied by foreigners, but how many new jobs the economy is capable of producing.

This distinction is critical because foreign workers do not operate in isolation from the wider economy. Many migrants are concentrated in informal and low-wage sectors, while South Africa’s unemployment problem extends into industries such as mining, manufacturing and public and community services.

The decline in mining and manufacturing employment, in particular, points to weaknesses in sectors traditionally regarded as important sources of relatively formal and productive employment.

The latest statistics therefore complicate the political narrative that foreign nationals are the principal cause of South Africa’s unemployment crisis.

While competition between citizens and migrants exists in particular segments of the labour market, the national unemployment figures indicate that the problem is considerably broader.

With 8.5 million people officially unemployed, the central challenge for policymakers is how to expand productive economic activity sufficiently to absorb new entrants while creating sustainable employment for those already outside the labour market.

The 33.6% unemployment rate suggests that targeting foreign workers may address political frustrations in some communities, but it cannot substitute for economic policies capable of generating jobs at scale.

EFF MP Mazwi Blose, using the Stats SA figures, challenged March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese, writing: “South Africa has lost 345,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year. Kanti where are the jobs that were created by Jacinta?”

South Africa now faces the difficult reality that even as hostility towards foreign workers has intensified around claims that migrants are taking scarce jobs, the country’s overall employment crisis has continued to deepen.