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The unemployment rate in Nelson Mandela Bay climbed to 29.8% in the first quarter of 2026, with the metro also recording the sharpest year-on-year increase in joblessness among SA’s metros.
The Bay’s unemployment rate rose by 7.5 percentage points from 22.3% in the first quarter of 2025.
This is according to Stats SA’s quarterly labour force survey released on Tuesday.
The Eastern Cape mirrored the metro, recording the largest year-on-year rise in any province, with the rate climbing by 5.3 percentage points.
The Eastern Cape recorded a 44.6% unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2026.
That means 43,000 jobs were lost in the province compared with the last quarter of 2025.
Year-on-year, the figure stands at 39,000 jobs lost.
The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber has warned that the sustained decline in labour market participation and employment in the city points to a structural economic crisis that requires urgent, co-ordinated intervention from the government, business and labour.
SA’s unemployment rate surged more than expected to 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026 from 31.4% in the last three months of 2025.
Economists and labour leaders say reversing the crisis will require a functioning, service-driven state that supports private sector growth alongside urgent reindustrialisation, infrastructure investment and targeted interventions in sectors of the economy that are collapsing.
Second to the Bay metro was Tshwane, increasing by 3.3 percentage points, followed by eThekwini (0.9), Johannesburg (0.4) and Mangaung (0.1).
The metros that recorded a decrease included Buffalo City (8.6), Cape Town (0.5) and Ekurhuleni (0.1).
Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane’s spokesperson, Sonwabo Mbananga, said the data released indicated that the province continued to experience severe pressures.
“On a quarter-to-quarter basis, the provincial unemployment rate also rose from 42.5% in quarter four of 2025 to 44.6% in quarter one of 2026,” Mbananga said.
“The Eastern Cape also recorded one of the lowest labour absorption rates nationally at 28.7%, highlighting the structural challenges confronting the provincial economy.”
He said Mabuyane believed several interrelated factors continued to drive the crisis.
“These include slow national economic growth, persistent energy and logistics constraints, weak consumer demand and broader global economic uncertainty affecting investment and production,” Mbananga said.
In the Eastern Cape, Mbananga said the province continued to face historical structural inequalities, high levels of rural underdevelopment, infrastructure backlogs and limited economic diversification in certain districts.
“Seasonal fluctuations in sectors such as agriculture, construction and community services may also have contributed to the latest quarterly decline.
“Furthermore, the labour market remains particularly vulnerable to pressures affecting manufacturing and the automotive value chain, which remain critical drivers of the provincial economy.”
He said Mabuyane had emphasised that the figures reinforced the urgency of accelerating economic reforms and strengthening inclusive growth initiatives.
“Government remains focused on improving infrastructure delivery, expanding industrialisation, supporting small businesses, growing township and rural economies and unlocking greater private sector investment.
“The province is also intensifying efforts to improve skills development and align training programmes with emerging sectors of the economy, particularly renewable energy, agro-processing, ocean economy industries, digital services and logistics.”
Mbananga said the province was also positioning itself as a strategic renewable energy hub, with substantial investments in wind and solar energy projects continuing to create both direct and indirect employment opportunities.
“The premier has further warned that persistently high unemployment levels continue to pose serious social risks to communities across the province,” he said.
“Government alone cannot resolve the challenge.
“Greater collaboration between government, business, labour, educational institutions and communities will be essential to drive inclusive growth and restore hope and dignity to millions of unemployed South Africans.”
DA MPL Vicky Knoetze said the survey revealed that the joblessness stranglehold on the Eastern Cape had tightened.
“The province also has the lowest absorption rate in the country, at just 28.7%, meaning that working-age residents in the Eastern Cape are less likely to be employed than people living anywhere else in SA,” Knoetze said.
“For families across the province, this crisis has reached catastrophic levels.
“It means empty cupboards, unpaid bills, young people trapped at home without opportunity and communities where work has become the exception rather than the norm.”
She said the province needed a credible and comprehensive intervention strategy.
“In a memorandum handed over to Mabuyane, the DA demanded a practical provincial plan to address poor basic service delivery, the collapse of local government and the growing pressure on the automotive sector, which remains one of the province’s most important economic anchors.
“The Eastern Cape does not lack people who want to work.
“It lacks a government capable of building an economy that can absorb them into work.”
Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber chief executive Denise van Huyssteen said the metro continued to lose economic momentum and opportunities for its people.
“While it is encouraging that Nelson Mandela Bay records a modest increase of about 4,000 jobs quarter-on-quarter, the reality is that unemployment has risen sharply from 28.2% to 29.8% in the first quarter of 2026 because job creation is simply not keeping pace with the number of people entering or re-entering the labour market.
“This reflects the immense pressure being placed on households and communities across our metro.
“More concerning is the long-term trend.
“Over the past 11 years, the metro has had a steady decline in the proportion of working-age residents who are employed, dropping from 45.3% in 2015 to 39.8% in 2026.
“Equally alarming is the decline in labour force participation, which falls from 67.6% to 56.7% over the same period.
“This means that a growing number of people effectively have disengaged from the economy altogether, whether as discouraged work-seekers or individuals who no longer see a pathway into meaningful economic participation.”
Van Huyssteen said the figures reinforced the urgent need to accelerate economic reforms and restore business confidence.
She said the chamber remained concerned about the national youth unemployment rate rising to 45.8%, warning that an entire generation risked being excluded from economic participation.
The sectors shedding the most jobs nationally included construction, transport and community services, Van Huyssteen said.
These were critical enablers of local economic activity and infrastructure development.
“The unemployment crisis demands urgency, collaboration and decisive leadership.
“We need policy certainty, municipal service delivery, reliable infrastructure, improved local governance and accelerated economic reform if we are to reverse these long-term trends and restore hope.”
Nelson Mandela University emeritus professor Charles Wait said there was no generic answer to rescue the situation.
“To come to any conclusion, we need an analysis of the sectors where the increase in unemployment occurred,” Wait said.
“For example, if it is in the agricultural sector, the answers to your further questions will have to be sector-specific.”
Generally, Wait said, employment should preferably be in a dynamic private sector.
“The private sector needs no encroachment by the public sector.”
Wait said there should be no more state-owned enterprises or larger staff complements in government and municipal employment.
He said there should be as little legislative control as possible and “as ideologically neutral as can be”.
He criticised officials for claiming that repairing infrastructure after failures was being proactive.
This, he said, was being reactive.
“Pro-active would have been a department that foresaw the need for maintenance, that planned and budgeted for it and systematically did the maintenance,” Wait said.
South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the figures exposed an economy in deep structural crisis and a society being pushed towards desperation.
He said deindustrialisation was destroying SA.
“Since 1994, SA has progressively weakened its productive industrial base,” Vavi said.
“The country increasingly exports raw materials while importing finished goods that could and should be produced locally.”
He said industries had been weakened and destroyed.
These included the textile, steel, engineering, metal fabrication, agro-processing and manufacturing value chains.
“Industrial towns continue to collapse while the economy becomes increasingly dependent on imports, debt, speculative finance and precarious informal activity,” he said.
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