By Lebone Rodah Mosima
The number of employed people in Tshwane increased by an estimated 22,000 in the second quarter of 2026, making it the only Gauteng metro to record employment growth over the quarter, although the city’s official unemployment rate remained high at 34.2%.
The City of Tshwane said the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), released by Statistics South Africa on Tuesday, showed an improvement in the capital’s labour market.
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Between the first and second quarters, the estimated number of employed people in Tshwane increased from about 1.229 million to 1.251 million.
Over the same period, the city’s official unemployment rate declined by 2.6 percentage points, from 36.8% to 34.2%.
“This was the largest improvement in the official unemployment rate among Gauteng’s three metropolitan municipalities during the quarter,” the city said.
“Tshwane was also the only Gauteng metro to record employment growth. While Tshwane added approximately 22,000 jobs, Johannesburg lost approximately 28,000 jobs and Ekurhuleni lost approximately 3,000 jobs during the quarter.”
Stats SA’s figures show that Tshwane had the lowest official unemployment rate among Gauteng’s three metros in the second quarter, compared with 34.6% in Ekurhuleni and 35.9% in Johannesburg.
Cape Town, meanwhile, recorded a decline of about 19,000 employed people during the quarter, while its official unemployment rate increased by 0.5 percentage points.
“While Tshwane continues to face an enormous unemployment challenge, the latest figures are an encouraging indication that Tshwane’s labour market moved in the right direction during the second quarter,” the city said.
“More people were employed in the capital, our employment absorption rate improved, and unemployment declined.”
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The city said its focus was on maintaining the momentum by making Tshwane more attractive to investors and businesses and creating conditions for employment growth.
It said the Tshwane Economic Revitalisation Strategy (TERS) provided the framework for this work, with a focus on industrial expansion, improving the ease of doing business, attracting strategic investment and unlocking economic opportunities across the capital.
“Over the past year, we have moved from adopting the strategy to implementing it,” the city said.
“Our task now is to ensure that investment commitments translate into projects on the ground, businesses are able to grow, and ultimately more residents of Tshwane are able to find work.”
The city acknowledged that unemployment remained a major challenge and said a rate of 34.2% was still far too high.
Nationally, the official unemployment rate increased by 0.9 percentage points from 32.7% in the first quarter to 33.6% in the second quarter.
The number of employed people declined by about 16,000 to 16.7 million, while the number of unemployed people increased by 345,000 to about 8.5 million.
The labour force consequently increased by 329,000, or 1.3%, to about 25.2 million.
Stats SA also reported that the number of discouraged work-seekers fell by 227,000 to about 3.7 million.
