Today’s post by Aidan Horn shows that informal employment totals less than half of formal employment in South Africa, for both men and women. We showed in an earlier post that total employment has risen from just over 14 million in 2009Q1 to just below 17 million in 2025Q1, a 15% rise. Informal employment has risen from 4.9 million in 2009Q1 to 5.2 million in 2025Q1, a 5.5% increase. The labour force, on the other hand, has risen by 32% since then. While the official unemployment rate is currently 32.9%, it would be 23.5% if one considers subsistence farmers and scholars and homemakers as employed, and when the entire population (i.e. not restricting to the working-age population) is used in the calculation based on official data.
