This province was South Africa’s best-performing in fourth quarter

A reason for this province's strong jobs performance is that the province is one of the frontier mining regions.

Feb 18, 2026 - 09:00
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This province was South Africa’s best-performing in fourth quarter

The Northern Cape had the largest drop in the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter 2025 out of South Africa’s nine provinces, easily beating the Western Cape .

The official unemployment rate for the Northern Cape, according to Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) Quarterly Labour Force Survey, dropped from 31.2% in the third quarter to 27.1% in the fourth quarter. This was a 4.1 percentage point improvement. On a national basis, the unemployment rate dropped to 31.4% from 31.9%.

By contrast, the Western Cape, which has the lowest unemployment rate, only improved to 18.1% from 19.7%.

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The QLFS NC sourced from Stats SA

In total, six provinces had an improvement in their provincial unemployment rates between the third and fourth quarters. The three provinces that showed a poorer performance were the Eastern Cape, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.

Mining promotes employment

A reason for the Northern Cape’s outperformance is that the province is one of the frontier mining regions with Copper 360, Orion and Vedanta all starting or expanding their operations.

As a massive 135 000 people were involved in either fetching water or wood in the fourth quarter in the Northern Cape, the improved provision of electricity and water for the mining operations will benefit the surrounding communities.

Water provides dignity

The Department of Water and Sanitation said in December that the Northern Cape was next on the priority list for bulk water supply. This is after launching a 10-year R25 billion water supply project in Limpopo that will create 42 000 jobs and provide potable water to 390 000 people.

Sean Phillips, the department’s director-general, said the pioneering Limpopo 50:50 public-private collaboration (PPC) could be used as a blueprint for other water supply projects. In particular, the Northern Cape, where mining expansions were currently taking place, could be the next area that would benefit from a similar PPC.

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QLFS Age sourced from Stats SA

A third of youth idle

Statistics South Africa said that 3.5 million out of 10.3 million or 34.0% of young people aged 15 years to 24 years old were not in employment, education or training. In other words, they are idle.

As young people have not had a chance to gain experience, their unemployment rates are higher than older people. The unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 34 years was 43.8% in the fourth quarter compared with 22.6% for those aged 35 to 64 years.

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