After years of weak growth and rising unemployment, many South Africans are convinced that migrants are a huge part of the problem. Their argument has been consistent. Fewer foreigners would mean more jobs and opportunities for citizens.
But if the numbers are right, the country may be directing its anger at one of the few factors that is not holding the economy back. Foreign-born residents account for less than 6% of South Africa’s population and roughly 9% of its labour force as of 2022. Those figures sit uneasily with claims that migrants are chiefly responsible for the country’s economic malaise.
Yet hostility towards foreign nationals has intensified. The latest wave of anti-immigrant protests began in April and has since spread countrywide. These demonstrations related violent vigilante movements have left many African migrants without homes or livelihoods, forcing many to flee South Africa. As of mid-June, the Nigerian government had repatriated at least 260 of its citizens. Their return came after some of the most hardline campaigners imposed an unofficial June 30 departure deadline for migrants
While demands for tougher immigration controls have some merits, evidence suggests that many of the forces weighing on South Africa’s growth would remain long after foreigners are gone.
This raises an uncomfortable possibility: what if the country is fighting one of the few battles that matters least to its economic future?
The numbers behind the anger
South Africa is Africa’s largest and most industrialised economy. It is home to some of the continent’s biggest companies and deepest capital markets.Yet prosperity has proved remarkably uneven. More than three decades after apartheid, wealth remains heavily concentrated. A 2021 World Bank study found that more than 80% of the country’s assets and major businesses were still in the hands of a white minority.
That concentration has coincided with a prolonged period of sluggish economic growth. For much of the past decade, GDP growth has averaged below 1%, a pace far too slow to reduce poverty or absorb the needs of a young and expanding workforce. Even after a modest rebound in 2025, years of power shortages, logistics bottlenecks, high levels of crime and policy uncertainty have continued to hold back investment.
The consequences are visible in the labour market. According to Statistic South Africa data, the country’s official unemployment rate rose to 32.7% in Q1 2026, remaining among the highest globally. For young people aged between 15 and 24, the picture is even bleaker. More than 60% were unemployed during the period, up from 57% in the previous quarter. Estimates show millions of South Africans have never held a formal job.
For many households, stagnant incomes have turned economic hardship into a permanent condition rather than a temporary setback. The World Bank estimates that close to 60% of South Africans live below the poverty line for upper-middle-income countries in 2025.
At the same time, GDP per capita has failed to regain lost ground after falling sharply in 2011. By 2023, output per person trailed that of many emerging economies, according to the International Monetary Fund.
In such an environment, migrants have become easy targets. Foreign nationals are often more visible in informal trade and low-skilled sectors where competition for opportunities is fiercest. Their presence has fuelled perceptions that outsiders are taking jobs, depressing wages and placing additional pressure on public services. Those beliefs have helped anti-immigrant movements such as Operation Dudula and more recently March and March gain support.
Recent protests suggest the demands of these groups have gone beyond rhetoric.
Do migrants really take jobs?
Given the attention immigration receives, it is tempting to think foreigners make up a large share of South Africa’s population and workforce. The numbers tell a more complicated story.
Despite nearly tripling between 1996 and 2022, South Africa’s foreign-born population accounted for just 3.9% of the country’s 62 million residents, up from 2% in 1996, according to Statistics South Africa (SSA). More recent estimates put the figure at around 3 million people, or 5.1% of the population in 2023. Put another way, only about one in twenty people living in South Africa is a foreign national.
The exact number remains contested because undocumented migration is difficult to measure. But migration researcher Loren Landau says there is little evidence to suggest the true figure is dramatically higher than official estimates. “The number might be slightly higher than what the Statistician General gave us, but it’s nowhere near what we have heard,” he told local media earlier in June.
Labour-force data tell a similar story. Immigrants accounted for 8.9% of employed people in the third quarter of 2022, up modestly from 6% a decade earlier. Even so, South African-born residents remained the overwhelming majority of workers throughout the period, according to the survey.
Curiously, immigrants were more likely to be employed than locals. Their unemployment rate stood at 18%, compared with 34% among South African-born residents. Their employment absorption rate was also significantly higher.
Analysts say this reflects the kinds of jobs migrants tend to accept rather than any inherent advantage in the labour market. According to Malueke, immigrants are concentrated in occupations with relatively low barriers to entry. These include domestic work and other low-skilled jobs, where employers are often willing to pay them less than South African workers.
There is another reason to question the popular narrative. If migrants were the principal cause of South Africa’s unemployment crisis, one might expect the two trends to move in lockstep. Yet joblessness has remained painfully high across very different migration patterns. Unemployment exceeded 20% even in the early 2000s, when the foreign-born population was barely 1 million. Today, despite migrants accounting for less than 5% of residents, the jobless rate stands above 32%.
That does not mean competition for work is imaginary. In poorer communities and low-skilled occupations, tensions are real. But the country’s unemployment crisis long predates the recent surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. The numbers suggest South Africa’s labour-market woes run much deeper than migration.
The costs supporters rarely talk about
Many supporters of tighter immigration controls focus on what migrants take from the economy. In South Africa, those concerns often centre on jobs, wages, public services and business opportunities.
But that is only one side of the ledger.
Migrants are not merely workers. Many are also employers, consumers, tenants and entrepreneurs. Their economic footprint extends well beyond the jobs they occupy.
A 2021 study by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) found that migrant-owned businesses in Johannesburg’s townships and informal settlements contribute to employment, local procurement, rental income and community value chains. Far from operating in isolation, many were deeply integrated into local economies, relying on South African suppliers, customers and workers.
The study also challenged a common perception about migrant businesses. Among workers employed by the firms surveyed, South Africans accounted for 17% of employees, making them the second-largest nationality represented after Zimbabweans.
The contribution extends beyond township commerce. South Africa continues to face shortages in a range of skilled professions, from engineering and information technology to healthcare and education. The government’s Critical Skills List exists because domestic supply has struggled to meet demand in key occupations. Foreign professionals have long helped fill some of those gaps.
Research suggests the economic benefits may be broader still. A 2018 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that immigration is associated with higher income per person and a positive net fiscal contribution in South Africa. Because migrants tend to have relatively high employment rates, the report estimated that foreign-born residents could raise GDP per capita by as much as 5%.
Migrants also contribute disproportionately to tax revenues through income taxes and value-added taxes. According to the OECD, “policies focused on immigrant integration and fighting discrimination would further enhance the economic contribution of immigrants in South Africa.”
None of this, however, suggests concerns about immigration are unfounded. Population growth can place pressure on housing, public services and local labour markets. In poorer communities, where jobs are scarce and competition is intense, those pressures can feel especially acute.
Still, any serious assessment of immigration’s impact on the South African economy must account for both sides of the equation.
South Africa’s bigger enemies
South Africa’s immigration debate is unfolding against a backdrop of deeper economic problems. Chief among them is electricity.
Years of underinvestment, ageing infrastructure and an imbalance between supply and demand have left the country struggling to meet its power needs. The resulting shortages have become a major obstacle to business activity and investment. At the height of the crisis in 2023, companies endured more than 300 days of load-shedding, forcing many to cut production, rely on expensive generators and delay expansion plans. The World Bank estimates that severe power outages reduced South Africa’s annual GDP growth by between 2% and 3%.
Elsewhere, rail and port systems operated by state-owned logistics company Transnet have deteriorated sharply in recent years. Equipment failures, theft and congestion have disrupted exports, costing mining companies billions of rand in lost revenue. Logistics bottlenecks have also hurt trade performance. Iron ore exports, for example, fell enough in 2025 for South Africa to lose its position as the world’s third largest supplier.
Meanwhile, high crime rates? burdensome regulations and slow progress on reforms in the energy and transport sectors continue to discourage investment. According to the International Monetary Fund, these frictions make it harder for small and medium-sized businesses to expand, innovate and create jobs.
Taken together, these problems explain far more of South Africa’s weak growth trajectory than migration flows, which remain small relative to the size of the population and labour force.
A costly distraction
Few countries have as much to gain from a more integrated African economy. South Africa remains closely tied to the continent through trade flows, energy inputs and consumer markets. In 2025, Africa accounted for nearly 30% of South Africa’s exports of value-added goods, making it the country’s second-largest export destination after Asia.
South African companies are also among the most active investors in the region. Banks such as Standard Bank and FirstRand, retailers such as Shoprite Holdings, and telecoms firms such as MTN Group have built extensive operations beyond South Africa’s borders.
That footprint now sits uneasily alongside scenes of African migrants being attacked, businesses looted and foreign nationals pressured to leave. The images travel quickly, shaping how South Africa is perceived in markets where its firms operate and compete.
While reputational costs may be difficult to measure, they are no less real. Investors tend to favour stable and predictable environments. Periodic outbreaks of xenophobic violence create the opposite impression.
This matters because South Africa is already struggling to attract the levels of investment needed to revive growth. Adding concerns about social unrest is unlikely to improve the country’s appeal.
The challenge now facing Africa’s largest economy is not simply how to manage migration. It is how to do so without undermining the regional ties, commercial relationships and investor confidence on which its own economic ambitions depend.
