South Africa’s Job Bloodbath: Retail and 4 Other Industries That Bled in 2025
- The year 2025 has seen a significant slash in jobs in specific industries due to a wide range of factors
- These factors include inflation, collapsing demand and the takeover of AI and automation systems
- Briefly News has taken a look at the five jobs that were hit the hardest in 2025, impacting the already high unemployment rate in South Africa
As 2025 draws to a close, South Africa’s labour market is reeling, according to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey and information collected by IG user @officialjandredebeer. Loadshedding may have eased, but a toxic cocktail of shrinking consumer spending, collapsing commodity demand and artificial intelligence (AI) has torn through entire sectors.
Here are the five industries that lost the most jobs in 2025, ranked from alarming to catastrophic.
Source: UGC
5. Mining
Once the backbone of the South African economy, mining is in a state of structural decline. China’s slowdown has slashed demand for platinum, iron ore and coal. At the same time, power outages and ongoing rail failures through Transnet have made many marginal operations simply unviable. Mines are closing shafts or putting them on care-and-maintenance at a pace not seen since the 1980s.
Furthermore, underground drones, autonomous haul trucks and AI-driven geological modelling are quietly slashing the need for human labour. Anglo American Platinum and Sibanye Stillwater both expanded their fleets of driverless vehicles in 2025.
4. Community & Social Services (public sector)
Nurses, social workers, admin staff and community health workers bore the brunt of national and provincial budget cuts.
The primary culprit is fiscal austerity, as the National Treasury enforced a multi-year spending ceiling to stabilise public debt. The public wage bill has, unfortunately, become an easy target for cuts. Hence, Treasury imposed a de facto budget hiring freeze, limiting new appointments.
Structural inefficiencies and governance failures further fuel the fire. Procurement systems are riddled with corruption and delay public services.
Moreover, AI-powered systems are being piloted in Gauteng and Western Cape clinics to reduce the need for call-centre and front-line admin staff.
3. Domestic Work, Gardening and Childcare
South Africa’s lowest-paid workers, earning around R2 500 - R4 500 a month, have been hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis. Middle-class households are letting go of domestic workers, nannies and gardeners, as they struggle to keep up with rising costs.
While robotic helpers are still luxury items here, the bigger threat is the rapid uptake of cheap online tutoring platforms and AI nannies (e.g. apps like Gauth and Elsa Speak) that middle-class parents are using to supplement or replace after-school carers.
2. Construction
There has been an eight-year decline in this industry, with the industry contracting by over 34% since 2017. The sector's woes are a concoction of various issues:
Sky-high interest rates killed property development. New housing bonds virtually dried up, commercial projects were mothballed, and even government infrastructure roll-outs slowed dramatically because of budget reprioritisation. Entire sites stand idle from Polokwane to Port Elizabeth.
The so-called "construction mafia" has also infiltrated major sites, demanding "protection fees" which can be up to 40% of contractual values. These groups, often operating in KZN and Gauteng, have halted projects mid-build, leading to losses in the billions.
1. Retail & Wholesale Trade
This is the undisputed heavyweight champion of job destruction in 2025. Loadshedding, shrinking real incomes and the unstoppable shift to online shopping hammered retail. Clothing, furniture and appliance chains closed hundreds of stores. Cashiers, shelf-packers and supervisors were the first to go.
Grocery giants like Pick 'n Pay reported a 12% drop in discretionary sales, prompting widespread retrenchments. Furthermore, loadshedding, although mitigated in 2025, left lasting scars, including billions in spoilage, forcing the closure of more than 150 stores.
However, the biggest wave in this tsunami is in e-commerce. Online retail sales exploded to R130 billion in 2025, up by 6% from 2024. The digital pivot has seen the loss of cashier jobs and a significant loss in floor-staff positions.
Moreover, e-commerce is where artificial intelligence is moving the fastest and most visibly.
What is the solution?
South Africa is experiencing a traditional cyclical downturn made worse by rapid technological displacement.
Source: UGC
A study by Citi and the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford shows that two-thirds (67%) of jobs in South Africa are at risk of being replaced by robots.
The report, titled 'Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used To Be', uses data from the World Bank to show that the risks of automation are higher than previously thought.
For the matric class of 2025 and the hundreds of thousands now joining the unemployment queue, the message is clear: the economy increasingly rewards scarce technical skills (data science, software development, renewable-energy technicians, AI prompt engineers) and punishes routine, repetitive or easily automated work.
Youth unemployment and mental health: A crisis “positive vibes” cannot cure
In similar news, Briefly News reported that South Africa’s unemployed youth face a reality that no amount of optimism can fully address.
With a staggering 55.7% of young people aged 18 to 35 out of work and over 9 million not in employment, education, or training, job hunting and rejections take a massive toll on mental health.
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Source: Briefly News
