Western Cape loses 117 000 jobs in the second quarter

The province has lost 117 000 jobs in Q2, just compared to Q1, according to SatsSA’s latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey. This makes the Western Cape the worst-performing province in absolute terms and second only to the Northern Cape in terms of percentage change. This follows growth of 49 000 jobs in the previous quarter, bringing the overall growth in employment to a dire negative 68 000 this year. This bucks the trend of the Western Cape historically outperforming the rest of the country in employment growth.

A potential component of this is the American tariff regime which, while not egregiously affecting every sector of the economy, does impact export-oriented agriculture, especially in areas like citrus and wine, which are major employers in the Western Cape.

This recent employment erosion leaves the province with an unemployment rate of 21.1%, eliminating some but not all of the gains seen over the previous year which saw a 22.2% unemployment rate in Q2 of 2024. This is still the lowest provincial unemployment rate by a significant margin, with the Northern Cape in second place at 32.7% in Q2Y2025.

The Western Cape experienced substantial job losses across several industries. The agricultural sector was the hardest hit, shedding 42 000 jobs, followed by finance with 45 000 job losses and manufacturing with 36 000. Construction declined by 21 000 jobs, while transport lost 14 000. Smaller declines were also seen in mining, which shed 3 000 jobs, and community and social services, which fell by 5 000.

Despite these widespread losses, some industries experienced growth. Utilities gained 1 000 jobs, while trade saw the largest increase with 43 000 new positions. Private household employment also rose, adding 7 000 jobs. These gains, however, were not enough to offset the significant job losses in other sectors.

The City of Cape Town, while hard hit (experiencing 41 000 losses), fared much better than the non-metro areas, which saw 76 000 employment losses despite already making up a much smaller section of the province’s work force.

As previously mentioned previously, these job numbers still represent an overall improvement on the equivalent quarter in the previous year. However, the finance, manufacturing, and private households industries did see 24 000 (-4.2%), 13 000 (-4.2%), and 24 000 (-12.8%) job losses year-on-year respectively. Manufacturing in particular follows a concerning trend of stagnation in terms of overall economic activity in the sector which increases the risk that the province requires significantly more time to recuperate these job losses. The additional pressure of US tariffs are unlikely to make the situation any easier to recover from as exporters face increased barriers to competition and heightened uncertainty.

StatsSA’s release is concerning for the province, but ultimately highlights how the relative dysfunction of our economy is still a massive improvement over the rather abysmal state of the rest of the country.