The proportion of the population that is employed (formally and informally) has increased since democracy in South Africa. Today’s post by Aidan Horn shows that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns had a bigger impact on the ratio of employed to the total population than the global financial crisis of 2008/9. The unemployment rate (not depicted in this graph) is the ratio between the unemployed and the labour force. This graph does not depict the size of the labour force, but rather the size of the entire population.
