South Africa loses 19,000 jobs per month

South Africa’s formal sector has shed 19,000 jobs a month over the last year, or 630 a day, according to the latest data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA). 

The StatSA Quarterly Employment Survey revealed that 80,000 jobs were lost in the second quarter of 2025 alone. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has called the latest news a “jobs bloodbath.”

The industries that were hit the hardest by job losses this quarter include the community services industry, with over 50,000 job losses, the trade industry, with 10,000 job losses, and the manufacturing industry, with a loss of 9,000. 

Over the last year, job losses for part-time positions have reached 174,000, and full-time positions have declined by 55,000. 

The DA’s spokesperson on Employment and Labour, Michael Bagraim, said that this tells its own story.

“Employers are avoiding full-time hires because labour laws make it too risky and too inflexible,” he said. 

Bagraim said that these statistics illustrate that the ANC is clamping down on the labour market with “red tape and punitive regulation.”

Bagraim said that hiring needs to become easier, not harder, and called for the government to scrap race-based legislation like Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) and the Employment Equity Act. 

“This strangles small businesses,” Bagraim said. He suggests replacing this with a system that empowers people based on needs and merit. 

A retrenchment crisis has been ongoing this year, with companies such as Coca-Cola, Arcelor-Mittal, Goodyear, and South African Breweries all announcing mass retrenchments in recent months. 

In the parliamentary committee on Economic Development and Trade, it was noted that these job cuts primarily affect regions such as Bloemfontein, East London, Newcastle, and Vanderbijlpark, which are already vulnerable to economic stress.

A downward spiral

South African Breweries (SAB) has announced plans to retrench 233 employees. The Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) appealed to the Labour Court to halt the retrenchments, but their case was dismissed. 

The union told GroundUp that SAB has already retrenched over 700 employees since 2020, before the latest wave of dismissals. 

Coca-Cola, which employs over 7,000 people nationally, intends to cut 680 jobs through restructuring. The majority of those affected are cleaners. The company said that the retrenchments are part of a realignment process.

Goodyear closed its Kereiga manufacturing plant, firing 900 employees in August 2025. The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber said that the closure illustrates the pressure tyre manufacturers are under in South Africa.

“Logistics challenges, lack of service delivery at a municipal level, inadequate maintenance of electricity, water, and sanitation infrastructure, increased costs relating to safety and security, as well as cheap tyre imports flooding the market,” caused the closure, the chamber said.  

ArcelorMittal will cut 4,000 jobs, almost half of its South African workforce. In an interview with BizNews, ArcelorMittal’s CEO, Kobus Verster, said that steel is in an international crisis, and local demand is low.

He warned that the closure of the Newcastle plant will directly affect 3,000 employees, but indirectly affect 80,000 people. This includes downstream companies that use ArcelorMittal steel to produce components.

Ford Motor Company has announced plans to cut 470 employees from its Silverton plant in Pretoria. The company told Reuters that it was forced to scale down, due to a drop in demand for its Rangers.

Recent tax changes in the UK have made it more expensive to own double-cab pickups with a payload of one tonne or more, and demand for the plug-in hybrid Ranger, which is exclusively exported, has been disappointing.

The automotive industry has experienced 4,000 job losses over the past two years, with 12 companies forced to close. 

Parliament is concerned that this trend has a ripple effect on small businesses, suppliers, service providers, and the informal sector. 

Chairperson of the committee, Sonja Boschoff, attributed the job loss crisis directly to an industrial decline in South Africa driven by high electricity costs and poor market choices. 

“Consumers have less spending power, municipalities have less revenue, and households are struggling,” she said. 

“Without immediate and coordinated action, we risk a downward spiral that will be difficult to reverse.”