SOUTH Africa’s unemployment rate rose to 27.7  per cent in the first quarter of 2017, said Statistics South Africa on Thursday last week.

“What we see is the highest [unemployment] since September 2003,” Statistician General Pali Lehohla said at the release of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) on Thursday.

The QLFS showed that the growth in employment by 144 000 was offset by the growth in the number of job seekers by 433 000, driving the unemployment rate to 27.7 per cent.

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According to the survey, on a quarter to quarter basis, the official unemployment rate increased by 1.2 per cent, showing that 6.2 million people were unemployed in the first quarter.

When looking at market rates by education level, the unemployment rate for those with less than matric was at 33.1 per cent, up from 31.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016. The unemployment rate for graduates went up from 7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 7.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2017.

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Lehohla said the labour participation rate of graduates is higher because the likelihood of them getting jobs is higher and they continue searching for work.