Cape Town - Unemployment in South Africa rose to 27.1% in the third quarter of 2016, Statistics South Africa announced on Tuesday.

This is 0.5 of a percentage point higher than the second quarter of 2016, when it was 26.6%, and 1.6% higher compared to the same period in 2015.

Statistics South Africa released the labour force survey for the third quarter of 2016 on Tuesday, which showed that of the 36.8 million people of working age in South Africa, altogether 21.7 million were in the labour force.