Fire Ministers Following South Africa’s Escalating Jobs Crisis

ActionSA is calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire all the GNU Ministers responsible for South Africa’s current job-destroying environment, following today’s devastating unemployment statistics released by Statistics South Africa.

The Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the first quarter of 2026 paints a bleak picture of a government that continues to fail millions of South Africans desperate for work. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the very Ministers tasked with enabling job creation are instead overseeing the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs South Africans already had.

South Africa lost 345,000 jobs in just three months. This means 30,000 jobs lost each week and 6,000 each workday. The official unemployment rate climbed from 31.4% to 32.7%, while the expanded unemployment rate — which includes discouraged work-seekers — rose to an alarming 43.7%.

Even more concerning is that discouraged work-seekers increased by 178,000 in a single quarter, bringing the total number of South Africans who have effectively lost hope of finding employment to just below 4 million people.

The formal sector shed 189,000 jobs, while the informal sector — often the last refuge for struggling South Africans — lost a further 127,000 jobs.

The heaviest employment losses were recorded in community and social services, which lost 206,000 jobs, followed by construction, which lost 110,000 jobs.

Today, fewer than four in ten working-age South Africans are employed, with the absorption rate now sitting at just 39.7%.

The lived reality behind these statistics is devastating.

Nearly 12 million South Africans are unemployed or have given up looking for work entirely. Millions of households remain trapped in poverty, unable to provide for their families or build a better future.

Just days after government commemorated Workers’ Day, millions of South Africans remain excluded from the dignity of work, the dignity of earning an income, and the dignity of being able to put food on the table.

Particularly alarming is the fact that 37.6% of South Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 are not in employment, education or training.

These figures are not the result of bad luck. They are the direct consequence of policy failure, economic stagnation, collapsing investor confidence, infrastructure failure, and a government that has failed to place economic growth and job creation at the centre of national policy.

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.

South Africans cannot continue paying the price for government failure while unemployment deepens quarter after quarter.

ActionSA JHB Success: Won 16% of the vote in Johannesburg in 2021.