Unemployment in Eswatini

The Labour Force Survey recorded unemployment at 33.5% in 2025, compared with 35.4% in 2023 and 33.3% in 2021. The 2021 measure counted 121,051 unemployed people aged 15 and over. Rates differed by group and region: 59.1% for ages 20 to 24, 54.5% for ages 15 to 19, 33.9% for women, 32.7% for men, 39.9% in Manzini, 30.5% in Hhohho, 30% in Shiselweni and 26.3% in Lubombo. A further 37,859 people were discouraged job-seekers and 93,902 were available for work but had not recently searched; including this potential labour force raised the combined measure to 47.1%. Non-agricultural informal employment accounted for 85.8%, which limits access to formal employment protections and contribution-based schemes. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security leads labour policy. The Department of National Employment Services provides employment promotion, vacancy information, skills development, vocational training and rehabilitation, trade testing, apprenticeships, training and localisation services, and labour statistics. Its Labour Market Information System, or LMIS, is intended to provide a single labour-information and job-matching interface, but current live access has not been verified. No reliable official information establishes a general registration requirement, service fee or deadline for using these services, and no national compulsory unemployment registration or pre-registration counselling requirement has been identified. There is no verified current statutory national unemployment benefit with published eligibility conditions, payment amounts, duration, waiting period, contributions or appeal deadlines. The Eswatini National Provident Fund provides retirement and incapacity savings rather than unemployment pay. The Public Service Pension Fund is not currently an unemployment-benefit provider. Existing social-security functions focus mainly on old age, disability, death and employment injury. A 2023 unemployment-benefit-fund proposal is not current law: it contemplated formal-sector coverage, exclusion of informal workers and self-employed people, twelve months of contributions in the previous eighteen months, a seven-day waiting period, payments for up to six months, a minimum of 50% of average earnings, a maximum of E15,000 per month and total contributions of about 3.75%, with a contribution ceiling of E30,000 per month. These draft figures create no present entitlement or payment duty. When unemployment follows an employer-related job loss, the Employment Act 1980 and applicable sector rules may provide financial or procedural rights. Redundancy covers job loss linked to circumstances such as business closure, modernisation, mechanisation, financial or marketing difficulties, shortages of orders or materials, or business decline. An employee with at least one year of continuous service may qualify for severance allowance of ten working days' pay for each completed year, subject to statutory exceptions. Notice periods depend on the law and contract; after probation, monthly-paid employees generally receive at least one month and fortnightly-paid employees at least fourteen days. Sectoral wage orders can add specific layoff rules. For example, a 2024 wage regulation allows 24 hours' notice and limits unpaid layoff to 15 working days for material shortages or 30 working days for a temporary interruption or another external cause, after which work must resume or termination must follow the Employment Act. That example does not automatically apply to every sector. For five or more planned redundancies, the employer must generally give at least one month's written notice to the Labour Commissioner and, where applicable, the collective-bargaining organisation. The notice should state the number of affected employees, their occupations and pay, the reasons, the intended effective date, and relevant financial or alternative information. A dismissal should not be unfair. The Department of Labour may intervene, while the Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration Commission and the Industrial Court handle disputes according to the case and applicable legal process. A historical COVID-19 Layoff Relief Fund supported 23,040 employees from 155 companies with E25 million by 2021, but it was a crisis measure and does not create a continuing unemployment benefit. For re-entry into work, the Department of National Employment Services is the main public pathway for vacancy matching, vocational training, trade testing, apprenticeships and disability rehabilitation. Access may be harder where transport, rural connectivity or digital access is limited. A person leaving formal employment should keep the employment contract, payslips, termination or redundancy notice, severance calculation and dispute records, then seek clarification from the Department of Labour or Labour Commissioner when an employer has not followed the applicable rules.