Youth unemployment myths
It’s not because older people remain in the labour market that younger people don’t have jobs
WITH students across the country having upped the ante in the campaign for university fees to be paid for by the state, here is another thing they and those just entering the workplace should think about: retirement age.
Students could argue that the #FeesMustFall struggle is not won yet so it is too premature to entertain what should happen four decades later. I would submit that this would be a pessimistic view of the struggle.
Throughout the years, those who led the struggle concurrently postulate their vision for a future society they were fighting for.
Nelson Mandela’s famous: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,” is one such example.
With this in mind, I am disappointed when I hear young people call for employed older persons to retire.
The idea that young people are jobless because older people are in jobs is dangerously misleading.
It is no different to what we hear about “foreign nationals stealing our jobs”.
Instead of asking critical questions about why we have joblessness or unemployed youth, it displaces the reasons for why there is joblessness and therefore delays the search for real solutions to this unhappy state of affairs.
Unemployment, like poverty and inequality, is a direct result of policy choices our state has and continues to make on the one hand, and the reality of the world economy on the other hand.
Blaming “old” people for youth unemployment allows for political elites and decision makers to get away with their choices – such as the type of education it spreads and content as well as macro-economic policies.
Then there is also the reality that South Africa is not exactly awash with skills.
To simply wish people out of the system because they were born by a certain date without measuring the value they bring to the organisation can only lead to organisations losing institutional knowledge that might be impossible to buy back for all the money in the world.
Early pension also puts a burden on the fiscus. The longer a person is able to earn their own money, take care of their own medical and social needs, the more the state can fund other needs, such as education paid for through the fiscus.
I am using this admittedly clumsy phrase because we know there is no such thing as free education.
As it is, Germany’s central bank is arguing that the country’s retirement age should be lifted another two years to 69.
France has lifted its threshold to 62 from 60 for people who have paid social security contributions throughout their working life. For those who haven’t, the retirement age is 67.
Another reason youngsters and students should pay attention to their ageism is that they will soon realise there is no substitute for experience and they stand to benefit from learning their craft at the feet of those who have mastered it.
The antipathy to the benefits of appren- ticeship already has a telling impact on much-needed vocational skills.
Many of those graduating from tertiary institutions are more likely to have a quality of life better than their parents, especially if they are black and rural. This means their own children will, all things being equal, have better life chances.
I am not suggesting people should work until they are old and senile or do not find an opportunity to take a break from their many years of toil and hard work. I am calling for a balance between what is in the best interests of society and the organisation with respect to what an employee is still able to contribute.
Imagine telling Barack Obama he must retire because he is now 55. Who in their right minds can say 69-year-old former deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke was long over the hill when he retired from the bench at the end of May and that he has nothing to offer an organisation?
The other, perhaps better, reason that those entering the workplace now should question the retirement age and agitate for it changing, is self-preservation.
With advances in health sciences as they are today compared to what they were in 1974, we can expect that four decades from today humanity would have made great strides.
Diseases considered deadly, such as cancers and Ebola, might in the future join smallpox and polio as diseases whose diagnosis once meant certain death.
Under those circumstances, 70 will be the new 40.
Hopefully, the youngsters will still have time to reverse the policies they would have helped enact when they believed in the invincibility of their youth.