South Africa experiences agricultural employment boom

South Africa has recorded the highest farm employment level since the last quarter of 2016 and is well above long-term agricultural employment.

This was revealed by Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz).

He posted that in the second quarter of 2023, about 894,000 people were employed in South Africa’s primary agriculture. This is a 1% increase quarter-on-quarter and 2% year-on-year.

“This is the highest farm employment level since the last quarter of 2016 and is well above the long-term agricultural employment of 780,000,” Sihlobo said.

The Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal significantly drove this employment growth.

“The robust production conditions of various field crops, forestry and aquaculture were behind the improvement in agricultural jobs in the second quarter,” he said.

“Overall, this notable improvement in employment in the second quarter is unsurprising as South Africa has a robust field crop and horticulture harvest following favourable rainfall.”

South Africa’s unemployment rate

Last week, Stats SA announced that the official unemployment rate was 32.6% in the second quarter of 2023 – a slight improvement from the first quarter.

The Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) results indicate that the number of employed persons increased by 154,000 to 16.3 million in Q2 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2023.

The number of unemployed persons decreased by 11,000 to 7.9 million during the same quarter.

Additionally, the number of people who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement increased by 93,000 to 13.3 million.

This resulted in the official unemployment rate decreasing by 0.3 of a percentage point from 32.9% in the first quarter of 2023 to 32.6% in the second quarter of 2023.

According to the expanded definition, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.3 of a percentage point to 42.1% in Q2 2023 compared to Q1 2023.