Work poser for Class of 2017
THE EXCITEMENT following the release of results of the tenth cohort of learners to sit for the National Senior Certificate must be tempered with the hard post-school reality that many will grapple with.
At a time when matriculants ought to be contemplating future prospects for study and work, joblessness lurks as an increasingly likely postschool reality.
Equal Education has cautioned against a matric certificate being touted as a guaranteed gateway to success. Many youths battle to find a first job despite searching, and government’s attempt to create jobs via an Employment Tax Incentive (the Youth Wage Subsidy) has failed dismally.
There are benefits to completing matric, and providing quality basic education for all is pivotal as a sustainable solution to addressing unemployment. However, the truth is that even the educationally privileged among the Class of 2017 will find the post-school environment to be lacking in employment opportunities.
South Africa’s unemployment rate has been rising over the last nine years, and is at 27.7% – higher than countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita including Botswana at 18.1%, Namibia at 22.3%, Gabon at 18.5% and Algeria at 11.7%.
Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba, in his Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, delivered a frank assessment of the dire state of the economy.
In response we expressed our deep concern regarding a ballooning debt-to-GDP ratio and revenue shortfall, the downward revision of economic growth to 0.7%, and the risk that fiscal deterioration posed to the advancement of social rights.
Low employment growth has been the consequence of low economic growth: The labour market cannot absorb the large numbers of young, new entrants. And while employers seek high-skilled workers, there is an oversupply of low-skilled workers – a structural mismatch between labour demand and supply.
The unemployment rate for youths (aged 15 to 34) was 38,6% according to Statistics SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2017. While low quality basic education and incomplete education leave young people without the suitable skills, higher education graduates are not immune to the effects of low economic growth.
The graduate unemployment rate was at 7,3% in the first quarter of 2017.
Thus, although a tertiary qualification lessens an individual’s chances of being unemployed, it is not a guaranteed gateway to employment, especially without workplace experience.
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 (NEET).This untapped potential is a national tragedy. The number of youths who are neither learning nor engaged in income-generating activities has risen since 1996, from 2 million. South Africa is very likely to fail to substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training by 2020 – a target of the Sustainable Development Goals.
According to the Department of Higher Education and Training, the largest proportion of NEETs aged 15 to 24 are those who exited high school without completing matric, and those who did matriculate but did not attain a diploma or degree. Urgent and drastic intervention is required to reduce youth unemployment, it is imperative that SETAs spend their budgets on developing training programmes. Work remains a central concept to human existence.
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