High unemployment rate among country’s youth is ‘extremely worrying’
THE country’s high youth unemployment rate was extremely worrying, experts have said.
Stats SA published its latest quarterly labour force survey on Tuesday for the first quarter of this year, which showed the number of employed people remained almost unchanged at 15 million, a slight decrease of 28 000.
The number of unemployed people increased by 8 000 to 7.2 million compared to the last three months of last year, while the number of discouraged work-seekers increased by 201 000.
The official unemployment rate among youth (15-34 years) was 46.3% in this year’s first quarter. The rate was 9.3% among university graduates.
The continued rise in discouraged work-seekers, increasing by 6.9%, continued to be a concern, said Anchor Capital investment analyst Casey Delport.
“This points to longer-term, structural issues within the South African economy as it is difficult to reincorporate or entice discouraged work-seekers back into the labour force. Bear in mind that the expanded definition of unemployment now sits at 43.2%. With youth unemployment at 63.3%, from a societal perspective this is a further cause of great concern.”
Delport said these numbers were indicative of an economy still affected by the Covid-19 pandemic with many capable workers still inactive.
Senior economist Lisette IJssel de Schepper of Stellenbosch University’s Bureau for Economic Research said the high youth unemployment rate was extremely worrying.
“Linked to this is the issue that unemployment is a structural problem in South Africa and not easily solved. For some perspective, the number of persons that have been unemployed for longer than a year has also reached a new record: 5.4 million. Indeed, three out of four people that are unemployed have been unemployed for more than a year. The longer people remain unemployed, the harder it is to find employment later on.”
She said with formal employment often lagging improvements, the level of employment would likely take much longer to recover to pre-Covid levels than for the level of economic activity to return to pre-Covid levels.
Economist Mike Schussler said the country needed to focus on bringing back certainty for business so it can create jobs. “We also need to tell people we have to work for ourselves more. Self employment is a road many other emerging market countries go, including most of Africa.”
Speaking at the launch event for Youth Month, National Youth Development Agency chief executive Waseem Carrim said that youth unemployment was not the only issue affecting young people in South Africa, but it was a primary issue.
“The absence of employment often leads to devastating socio-economic effects which include the dependence on other people, substance and drug abuse and violence,” he said.
Carrim said tackling youth unemployment required real political will and effort from all sectors.
He said the official Youth Day celebration would take place at the Harry Gwala Stadium, Pietermaritzburg, where President Cyril Ramaphosa would reflect on the progress made by the presidential youth employment initiative.