WATCH | Every SA province ranked by unemployment – from worst to best
· The South African
South Africa’s unemployment crisis looks very different depending on where you live, with the gap between the country’s best- and worst-performing provinces remaining strikingly wide.
The latest figures from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) show that the Western Cape had the country’s lowest official unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2026, while the Eastern Cape recorded the highest.
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READ | South Africa’s unemployment rate rises as 8.6 million remain jobless
This video ranks all nine provinces from the highest unemployment rate to the lowest, revealing just how uneven the country’s employment picture remains.
How the nine provinces rank
The Western Cape was the only province with an unemployment rate below 20%, recording 19.4% between July and September 2026.
At the other end of the ranking, the Eastern Cape recorded an unemployment rate of 44.3%.
That means the gap between the two provinces stood at 24.9 percentage points.
The full provincial ranking, from worst to best, was:
RankProvinceUnemployment rate1Eastern Cape44.3%2Free State39.1%3North West38.1%4Mpumalanga37.8%5Gauteng35.7%6KwaZulu-Natal33.3%7Limpopo30.2%8Northern Cape30.0%9Western Cape19.4%South Africa’s national unemployment rate stood at 33.7% during the quarter.
Western Cape pulls further ahead
The Western Cape’s unemployment rate edged down from 19.5% in the second quarter to 19.4% in the third quarter.
The province also recorded an increase of approximately 48 000 employed people compared with the previous quarter, taking its total employed population to around 2.88 million.
Year-on-year, employment in the province increased by 69 000.
The Eastern Cape, meanwhile, remained the country’s unemployment hotspot, with more than four in every 10 people in its labour force officially unemployed.
South Africa’s unemployment challenge
Nationally, the unemployment rate increased from 33.6% in the second quarter to 33.7% in the third quarter of 2026.
The number of unemployed people rose by 97 000 to approximately 8.58 million, while employment increased by 101 000 to 16.84 million.
The provincial rankings underline how unevenly employment opportunities are distributed across South Africa.
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