Jobseekers keep drawing blanks

Official unemployment rate is 27.2%, but is probably higher.

F ew of those who’re looking for jobs can find one in an economy with an unemployment rate of 27.2%. In reality, the picture is more bleak because the official rate tends to understate the weakness of job prospects.

How so? Due to missing workers, prospective workers who, because of the prolonged scarcity of job opportunities, are neither employed nor looking for a job.

South Africa has 15.5 million people who are not economically active, but there’s a more worrying pool: the clear and present danger of the youth, who have been ignored by the private sector and government.

According to the Statistics SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2018, we have 10.3 million people aged between 15 and 24 who are not in employment, education or training. Not because they do not want to, but because of the way our economy is set up.

It’s as if the economy, its policies, and the country’s leaders are conspiring against these young people. Alarmingly, these young people make up most of the unemployed at 27.2%. If ever there was a reason to panic or worry, this is it.

In a complex economy, conventional measures don’t always show the full picture. If we are to use Stats SA’s expanded unemployment rate, which sits at 37.2%, then perhaps we will begin to appreciate the extent of the crisis.

It has prompted me to ask how long the local economy can survive this crisis.

Can government and the private sector afford to think that it can go on without consequences?

I think not. It is in both their interests for the economy to start improving and eventually growing. We know a positive gross domestic product won’t automatically reduce unemployment and poverty.

For South Africa, it will take economic growth in addition to rising productivity and fair distribution of income.

Low labour participation, high youth unemployment and an informal employment sector that barely improves the lives of those participating in it – these are not just wrinkles in the economy but crevices that appear to be widening. In the 10 years since the 2008 global financial crisis, hundreds of thousands of South Africans have left the labour force.

Mamokgethi Molopyane is a mining and labour analyst