Tough job market awaits matriculants

THOUSANDS of youths who passed matric last year will grapple with one of the hardships of post-school reality – unemployment.

Advocacy group Equal Education (EE) said although this was “a time when matriculants ought to be contemplating various future prospects for study and work, joblessness lurks as an increasingly likely postschool reality”.

“Many youths battle to find a first job despite actively searching, and the government’s attempt to create jobs via an Employment Tax Incentive (the Youth Wage Subsidy) has failed dismally,” said Sibabalwe Gcilitshana, EE’s parliamentary officer.

Gcilitshana said there were “real benefits to completing matric, and providing quality basic education for all is pivotal as a sustainable solution to addressing unemployment”.

“However, the difficult truth is that even the educationally privileged among the Class of 2017 will find the current post-school environment to be severely lacking in employment opportunities.

“Economic Context and Youth Unemployment South Africa’s unemployment rate has been rising over the last nine years, and is now at 27.7% – higher than countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita including Botswana, at 18.1%, and Gabon, at 18.5%.

“Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba, in his recent mediumterm budget policy statement, delivered a frank assessment of the dire state of the South African economy.

“In response, we expressed our deep concern regarding the ballooning debt-to-GDP ratio and revenue shortfall, the downward revision of economic growth to 0.7%, and the risk that fiscal deterioration poses to the advancement of social rights,” Gcilitshana said.

Low employment growth was the consequence of low economic growth.

“The labour market cannot absorb the large numbers of new entrants. And while employers seek high-skilled workers, there is an oversupply of low-skilled workers.

“Youths bear the brunt of unemployment. The unemployment rate for youths (aged 15 to 34 years) was 38.6%, according to the Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2017,” Gcilitshana said.

“The conditions for economic growth cannot be created under a government that is led by Jacob Zuma and his Gupta associates.”

Gcilitshana added that in the third quarter of 2017, 30% of South Africa’s 10.3 million youths aged 15 to 24 were not in employment, education or training.