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JOHANNESBURG—One in four working-age South Africans was unemployed in the first three months of the year, a rise from the previous quarter even as the continent's biggest economy continued a slow recovery from last year's recession, official data released Tuesday showed.

The unemployment rate rose to 25.2% from 23.5% in the previous quarter and 24.3% a year earlier, Statistics South Africa's survey showed. The number of people with a job dropped by 171,000 on the quarter to 12.8 million.

Close to 900,000 jobs were lost last year as South Africa's economy was tipped into its first recession in 17 years, undermining the government's commitment to boost employment and reduce poverty. The economy grew 3.2% in the final quarter of 2009, narrowing the average contraction for the year to 1.8%.

"Further job losses are disappointing as we expected employment to increase along with improving economic conditions," said Johannes Khosa, an economist at Nedbank.

Stats SA's data showed that despite an additional 35,000 agricultural jobs in the first quarter compared with the previous period, jobs in the mining industry were flat and 126,000 finance jobs were lost. The manufacturing industry lost 33,000 jobs and construction 64,000 jobs.

Razia Khan, regional head of research at Standard Chartered in London, said the decline in employment in manufacturing comes despite recent restocking by companies and may reflect the strength of the rand against the dollar and some other key currencies. She said the drop in construction jobs comes ahead of the soccer World Cup in June and July, when the industry would be expected to be reasonably robust.

"What South Africa needs for a sustainable economic turnaround is some uplift to consumption, and we just don't see it coming through," Ms. Khan said.

Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@dowjones.com