This comes after South Africa’s unemployment rate edged up to 32.1% in the fourth quarter of last year from 31.9% in the previous quarter.

Stats SA's data shows that the largest employment losses were in the community and social services sector, which shed 171 000 jobs in the fourth quarter and there were also job losses in construction, agriculture, trade and manufacturing.

While the data also shows that in the last decade, the number of unemployed people in South Africa increased from 4.8 million to 7.9 million, signalling the country’s economic malaise during the period, Van der Linde has noted that the unemployment rate is moving in the wrong direction.

This will irk the ruling party, ANC while it is on the campaign trail trying to appease voters by telling them of its efforts to boost job growth, the fact that domestic fuel prices are on the rise and with loadshedding continuing unabated does not help," Van der Linde said.

The economist also pointed that the gross domestic product (GDP) changed a bit in the third quarter from pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2020, indicating that the South African economy has not gone anywhere in the past three years, while this is not expected to change in the near term.

"A lack of infrastructure investment over the years has limited economic growth potential, which means the economy is unable to produce enough jobs to satisfy demand, we forecast that South Africa’s unemployment rate will hover at current high levels over the medium term," Van der Linde added.

Meanwhile, Johannes Khosa and Nicky Weimar, economists at the Nedbank Group Economic Unit, said, "The increase was driven by lower employment and a larger labour force, concerningly, but not surprisingly, the job losses were driven by the formal sector, which shed 124 000 jobs, offsetting the 124 000 jobs created in the informal sector during the quarter."

However, they find it encouraging that the number of discouraged workers declined by a further 107 000, as less severe power disruptions and lower transport costs likely enabled more individuals to actively seek employment.

The country’s crippling structural constraints, notably power outages and transport bottlenecks, will continue to undermine sales and elevate operating costs, squeezing private sector profits and we expect employment growth to soften this year, before picking up more convincingly next year while the unemployment rate will, therefore, remain high," Khoza and Weimar added.

The fourth quarter's results also showed that the youth remained vulnerable in the labour market.