As winter tightens its grip on East London, a heartbreaking reality continues to unfold in the city’s central business district. Men and women, driven by unemployment, poverty, and difficult life circumstances, have turned the streets into their homes. (ALAN EASON)
The Eastern Cape once again recorded the highest official unemployment rate among SA’s provinces, with the number of unemployed people rising by 147,000 in the second quarter of this year.
The province’s official unemployment rate surged to 47.5% between April and June, leaving nearly one in every two economically active people without work.
According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey released on Tuesday, the rate increased by 2.9 percentage points from 44.6% in the first quarter, the steepest quarterly increase among the nine provinces.
It was also eight percentage points higher than the 39.5% recorded during the same period last year, representing the largest deterioration nationally.
The number of unemployed people in the Eastern Cape rose from 1.07-million in the first quarter of 2026 to 1.22-million in the quarter under review.
The number of unemployed people was 263,000 higher than a year ago, representing an increase of 27.5%.
Mdantsane-born Xabiso Stemele (not his real surname) knows the realities of losing a job.
He has been unemployed since January, after a company he had worked for in Cape Town for six years retrenched some of its staff.
“I had worked in that company’s human resources unit for six years.
“Those were the best years of my life as I was able to financially support my family, which now fully depends on the old age grant my grandfather receives.
“As I was starting to construct a backyard flat for myself at home, the talk of restructuring surfaced in our company, and unfortunately I was one of those who were later served with retrenchment letters.
“For the past eight months now, I have been back home as I could no longer afford to pay rent, fend for my family and survive in the big city while unemployed and looking for a job.
“It has been a humiliating situation to depend on my grandfather’s social grant.
“However, I have not given up hope that I would one day find something here in the province,” Stemele said.
The unemployment crisis remained particularly severe outside the province’s two metropolitan areas.
The official unemployment rate in the Eastern Cape’s non-metro areas rose from 53.4% to 56.5%.
The number of unemployed people increased by 105,000 to 918,000, while employment declined marginally by 1,000 to 707,000.
Buffalo City Metro’s unemployment rate increased from 28.7% to 30.5%.
Employment grew by about 7,000 to 268,000, but the number of unemployed people increased by 12,000 to 118,000.
Nelson Mandela Bay recorded a sharper increase, from 29.8% to 33.1%.
It added about 7,000 jobs, taking total employment to 371,000, but its unemployed population grew by 29,000 to 183,000.
At industry level, finance added about 18,000 jobs, while manufacturing and construction each gained about 17,000.
These gains were offset by losses of about 16,000 jobs in transport, 12,000 in trade and 5,000 each in community and social services and private households.
Compared with the second quarter of 2025, trade employment fell by about 37,000, transport by 30,000, manufacturing by 20,000 and private household employment by 18,000.
Premier Oscar Mabuyane said unemployment was one of the problems “that we still need to find a formula to solve”.
He said the province had been hit hard by challenges in the auto sector, which he described as the “backbone in the province”.
While welcoming the 13,000 jobs created during the quarter, he said the increase was too small to address the unemployment challenge.
“But with the work that we’re doing in mobilising investors, bringing people into our province, it’s exactly that issue that we need to address.
“If we can perform better as government, we will be able to create a better conducive environment for the private sector to be on board.”
Young people continued to bear the brunt of the crisis.
More than half, or 51.1%, of Eastern Cape residents aged between 15 and 34 were not in employment, education or training during the second quarter.
This represented about 1.28-million young people, an increase of 26,000 from the previous quarter and 131,000 from a year ago.
DA MPL Andrew Whitfield said the latest statistics exposed the depth of the Eastern Cape’s economic crisis.
He said the province urgently needed to get municipalities working so they could attract investment and create jobs.
“The Eastern Cape does not have a shortage of people willing to work.
“It has a shortage of jobs, investment and functioning local economies capable of creating opportunity.”
Whitfield said the figures could not be separated from the province’s outward migration crisis.
“Working towns and cities attract investment. Investment allows businesses to expand, and expanding businesses create jobs,” he said.
EFF provincial secretary Simthembile Madikizela said his party was “outraged, but not surprised” by the figures.
He said the unemployment rate “reflects the devastating consequences of decades of ANC misgovernance, economic stagnation and failure to industrialise the province”.
Black Business Forum president Luthando Bara said the loss of so many jobs should be treated as an economic emergency requiring urgent and co-ordinated action.
“These figures cannot become statistics that we simply acknowledge every quarter.
“Behind them are households that have lost incomes, young people entering the labour market with diminishing prospects, and businesses operating in communities where disposable income continues to decline.”
A KuGompo City-based recruitment agency official, who asked not to be named, said there were many unemployed people suitable for entry-level positions, but skilled candidates were harder to find.
She said there was also a shortage of companies hiring.
“I think a lot of companies are cutting costs. When one person resigns, they don’t want to hire a replacement.
“They’re just going to find people internally who they can split the work between.”
Nationally, the official unemployment rate increased from 32.7% to 33.6%.
Employment declined by 16,000, while the number of unemployed people increased by 345,000 to about 8.5-million.
Cosatu provincial chair Gura Maleki said the statistics were “highly disturbing, with the youth hardest hit”.
“Loss of jobs in the two metros have a ripple effect in the economy of surrounding towns and far-flung areas, as a result, working class communities are plunged into deeper poverty, and that is a real concern,” Maleki said.
Source: https://www.dailydispatch.co.za/news/2026-08-12-eastern-cape-records-steepest-rise-in-unemployment/