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The credibility of both South Africa’s Government of National Unity (GNU) and the much-vaunted reforms driven by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration were ruthlessly exposed in new jobs data released by South Africa’s official statistical agency yesterday. Below are the key things to know.

The official rate of unemployment increased over the past year. South Africa's official unemployment rate stood at 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, compared to 33.2% in the second quarter of 2025.

That number measures the share of people of working age who are not working and actively seeking work. But South Africa also records a second measure of unemployment that accounts for people who are so disheartened that they have given up looking for a job even though they want one.

On that second measure, called the expanded rate of unemployment, South Africa’s unemployment rate increased to 43.8% in the second quarter of 2026, compared to 43.0% in the second quarter of 2025.

The number of people with jobs fell across the year.

The number of people employed stood at 16 754 000 in the second quarter of 2026 compared to 16 807 000 in the second quarter of 2025, meaning that there has been a loss of 53 000 jobs over the past year.

For young people, the data remain terrifying.

The official unemployment rate was 62.8% for people aged 15 to 24 in the second quarter of 2026, compared to 62.2% in the second quarter of 2025.

It was 41.8% for people aged 25 to 34 in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 40.5% in the second quarter of 2025.

By international standards South Africa’s unemployment rate is off the charts.

For 2026 the global rate is estimated at 4.9%, making South Africa’s official figure around seven times higher than the global average and the expanded figure almost nine times higher.

Why are the numbers so high and why are they rising further under the GNU despite the much-vaunted Ramaphosa reforms?

Much of the answer sits on the chart below, which tracks economic growth for South Africa against the number of people in employment.

The chart shows that in 1994 there were around eight million people employed. As GDP growth marched towards 5.0% and held that level between 2004 and 2007, the number of people employed rose to near 15 million by 2008, meaning the country roughly doubled the number of people employed through the first 15 or so years of democracy.

However, from 2009 to 2026, economic growth has averaged just 1.1%, and only around 2.1 million jobs were added to employment over those 17 years, a quarter of the number that was added in the first 14 years of South Africa's democracy.

Why did the growth rate fall?

The confluence of three issues caused it to do that.

The first is the threat of expropriation without compensation. Current expropriation policy allows the state to take any fixed or movable asset without market-related compensation. The legacy media continues to report falsely that the law is targeted at land and specifically underutilised land. But that is untrue, as investors who do their due diligence investigations into South Africa become aware.

The second is that empowerment policy taxes capital invested in South Africa. Investors are required to surrender a share of their business ventures to local partners and this fundamentally reduces the competitiveness of South Africa’s economy.

The third is that mismanagement of the national electricity parastatal matched with a green transition to a net-zero economy has left South Africa in a position where it does not have the electricity to justify further industrial investment. The effect is worsened by the actions of often Western-funded climate activists who sabotage investments in South African oil and gas reserves.

None of the government’s purported reforms address these issues in an effective manner and, on the contrary, the evidence is often that the Ramaphosa administration is doubling down on these policies.

As a consequence of his government’s aversion to reform, the investment rate that tracks capital invested in the economy as a share of GDP is lower than when Ramaphosa came to power, and his net job-creation efforts fall far short of those achieved even under the leadership of Jacob Zuma. The Mandela and Mbeki presidencies saw job creation at roughly 500.0% of the rate under Ramaphosa.

A fourth issue is that logistics chains are snarled up by badly run state railways and ports. Reforms in these areas are moving at a glacial pace while South Africa’s foreign policy towards the United States remains hostile and the South African government remains opposed to striking a trade and investment deal with Washington. Along different but related lines, the snarl-ups and uncompetitiveness of the South African economy mean that it cannot take advantage of trade and investment incentives offered to it by Beijing.

According to Bheki Mahlobo, The Common Sense's in-house economist, an economic growth rate of around 1.0% is a non-starter for job creation. Growth needs to reach 2.0% to 3.0% for the labour market to turn in a sustainable manner and 4.0% to 5.0% is what is required to bring unemployment down to nearer 10.0% over a 20-year horizon.

This requires lifting the fixed investment rate from the current sub-15.0% level as a share of GDP to nearer 25.0%, which in turn requires sweeping reforms that Cabinet has so far been unwilling to countenance.

According to Mahlobo, “Until that changes, there is very little to say about any single employment data release. Whether the numbers drift up or down by a point or so from one quarter to the next is not changing the fact that South Africa sits with a disaster in the heart of its economy and a government not serious about fixing that.”

That stagnation in the unemployment rate carries a direct political cost. It was stagnation in people's material circumstances that cost the African National Congress (ANC) its majority in 2024, and recent Social Research Foundation polling conducted with The Common Sense found the same frustration building under the GNU. A majority of voters, including ANC and Democratic Alliance supporters, rate the GNU’s performance positively, yet a nearly equal share say their standard of living has not improved, or has worsened, since it was formed. Without serious reforms, what the data show is that support for the GNU will decline and South Africa will continue to fragment towards an increasingly enclave future.