Some imagination needed to get youth into the marketplace
AS SOUTH Africans were insulting one another from the comfort and relative safety of social media (our national pastime now that we can’t bear to watch the embarrassment that is our national soccer team), Statistics SA again published a set of sobering statistics.
Another set, equally sobering, was published mid-May. This week the second set of statistics revealed a 2.2% contraction in the GDP in the quarter ended March. The previous quarter had registered promising 3.1% growth. There’s no need to get into the details of this dismal state of affairs.
The first piece of statistics I’m concerned about, published on May 15, concerns youth unemployment and is tucked inside the labour force survey. There are 10.3m people in the 15-24 age range. Thirty-two percent of them are not working, not in education and not in training.
That’s 3.4m people who are disengaged from the marketplace and the education that should prepare them for a future in which they can contribute to the development of their families and communities.
We have another 5m jobless people in the 25-34 category. The official unemployment rate here is one in three people, says Stats SA. When pooling together those aged 15-34, officially the youth in SA, the unemployment rate soars to 38.2%. Of all unemployed people in SA, the youth account for 65.3%.
There were about 71m unemployed youth, aged 15-24, globally in 2017, says the International Labour Organisation.
Context: 3.4m of them are here in SA, which has a population of 55.7m. We punch way above our weight in this category. Negatively so. Then we have the real unemployment rate – not the official rate government would prefer us to believe – standing at 36.7%.
This is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Young people facing the hardships of unemployment generally don’t have much to lose.
“Some of these young people have become discouraged with the labour market and they are also not building on their skills base through education and training,” says Stats SA.
In a country with such a high unemployment rate, young South Africans face extreme difficulties engaging with the labour market.
The first-quarter loss in GDP growth momentum therefore, even if it may not eventually lead to a recession, is a significant blow to those outside the labour market.
Those inside the job market will not be immune from negative effects, as many still have to extend a helping hand to unemployed relatives. When you consider the ever-increasing cost of living, including the recent fuel price and VAT increases, the struggle to enter the labour force becomes even steeper.
The biggest problem in SA, however, is the lack of imagination in dealing with the problem. And any problem. Those tasked with leading our society, as well as all politicians, don’t seem to think beyond the next election. But this is a crisis that should not be wasted.
As an attempt at a solution to bring these young people into the economically active population, it is incumbent on government to reopen the vocational training institutions it has been neglecting for almost a generation.
A young person with some useful skill, such as a welder or plumber, stands a much better chance of creating a job – not only for him or herself, but also for another person.
A relaxation of the basic conditions of employment law for small enterprises, particularly, would also go a long way to defeating our unemployment rate, which is at crisis level.
As the Swahili saying goes: haba na haba hujaza kibaba (little by little fills the pot).