South Africa's jobless rate rises to 26.4 pct in Q1 2015

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's unemployment rate rose to 26.4 percent of the labour force in the first quarter of 2015 from 24.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, data showed on Tuesday. In its quarterly labour force survey, which polls households, Statistics South Africa said this amounted to 5.535 million people without work in the first three months of the year, from 4.909 million in the last quarter of 2014. The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, was at 36.1 percent in the first quarter from 34.6 percent previously.