South African employers expected job seekers to have moderate employment opportunities in the third quarter of the year, with the seasonally adjusted net employment outlook of the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey increasing to 8% – the most optimistic forecast since the third quarter of 2010.

The third quarter outlook was up four percentage points quarter-on-quarter and seven percentage points year-on-year.

“The latest survey appears to indicate that employer confidence is growing a bit stronger. This quarter’s forecast is the strongest in four years. Additionally, net employment outlooks are positive in all industry sectors and in all regions; the last time this happened was in the first quarter of 2009,” Manpower South Africa MD Lyndy van den Barselaar said.

She added that, while the net employment outlook of 8% reflected a cautiously optimistic job market for the third quarter, it was imperative that provincial government continued to support employment through skills training and the provision of support for small-, medium-sized and microenterprises to maintain growth in the job market.

The survey, which gathered responses from 750 South African employers, indicated that the strongest employment prospects were expected in the mining and quarrying, public and social, and restaurants and hotels sectors, which reflected net employment outlooks of 15%, 14% and 14% respectively.

“The expected employment gains in the mining and quarrying sector can be attributed to the sector’s hiring managers looking to employ more highly skilled workers, as it moves toward new, more technologically advanced forms of mining, such as mechanised and offshore mining. This will require the sector to employ those with the necessary skills set to operate the necessary machinery and technology used in these forms of mining,” Van den Barselaar explained.

The weakest hiring intentions were reported in the manufacturing and the transport, storage and communications sectors, which both reported net employment outlooks of 8%.

Meanwhile, quarter-on-quarter hiring prospects strengthened across all industry sectors. The agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing sector experienced a considerable increase of 17 percentage points, followed by the construction sector at 16 percentage points and the public and social sector at 13 percentage points.

The mining and quarrying, restaurants and hotels and wholesale and retail trade sectors all experienced moderate increases of eight percentage points quarter-on-quarter, while finance, insurance, real estate and business services and manufacturing employers also reported moderate increases of five percentage points.

The transport, storage and communication sector employers reported a slight increase of two percentage points, while the electrical, gas and water supply sector remained relatively stable, quarter-on-quarter, with a one percentage point increase.

Further, when compared with the same quarter in 2013, employers across all ten sectors reported improvements. The strongest improvements were seen in the agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing sector and the restaurants and hotels sector where the net employment outlooks strengthened by 18 percentage points.

The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey comprised data from five of South Africa's provinces – the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and the Free State.