Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa's unemployment rate fell to 23.1 percent in the second quarter as economic growth rebounded from a six-year low.

The jobless rate dropped from 23.5 percent in the first three months of the year, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said today, citing a new quarterly labor force survey. The number of people out of work declined to 4.11 million from 4.19 million.

Africa's biggest economy expanded an annualized 4.9 percent in the second quarter, up from 2.1 percent in the previous three months, as a power shortage that shut gold and platinum mines in January eased. The statistics office had previously reported an unemployment rate of 23 percent, the highest of 61 countries tracked by Bloomberg.

``In the short-run you're likely to see a correlation between gross domestic product and employment,'' Rashad Cassim, the deputy director general of the statistics office, told reporters in Johannesburg today. In future the unemployment data will be published before the quarterly economic growth data, giving a ``rough indicator of where GDP is going.''

Employment in mining rose 3.9 percent to 346,000 in the second quarter from the previous three months, while jobs in the transport industry increased 3.6 percent to 774,000, the statistics office said. The trade industry, the biggest employer in the economy, lost 51,000 jobs, or 1.6 percent, to 3.1 million.

Not Enough

South Africa's economy hasn't increased jobs at a fast enough pace to slash unemployment, fueling poverty and crime in the country. A shortage of skilled workers, such as engineers, is also hampering the government's goal to cut the unemployment rate to 14 percent by 2014 and halve poverty.

The statistics office switched to a new survey following concern over the ``reliability of the data and its frequency,'' Kefiloe Masiteng, deputy director-general of population and social statistics, told reporters in Johannesburg today.

Some of the changes made in the survey include reducing the maximum age of workers to 64 years from 65 and excluding non- market production, such as subsistence farming, the statistics office said.

While the data in the new survey doesn't show much difference to the previously published figures, the ``quality of the data'' has improved because of methodological changes, Pali Lehohla, the director general of the statistics office, told reporters.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nasreen Seria in Johannesburg nseria@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 28, 2008 05:07 EDT