South Africa's unemployment rate edged up to 29.1 percent of the labour force.
This is the highest unemployment rate since Statistics South Africa started measuring unemployment using a quarterly labour force survey in 2008.
The agency said the number of jobless people in the country had increased to 6.7 million in the third quarter from 4.5 million a decade ago.
The data showed black African women were the most vulnerable with an unemployment rate of over 30 percent, while coloureds were sitting at a jobless rate of 23.7 percent and South Africans of Indian/Asian ancestry were at 18.2 percent.