Signals of a jobless future in South Africa

Inspite of implementing various policies, incentive schemes and other job creating programmes, the unemployment rate in South Africa is still at an alarming rate. Infact the labour market is at the highest level of crisis in past 10 years.

Loane Sharpe - Adcorp’s labour economist said that, around 500 000 youths have registered for their matric exams this year, but from that 306 000 will remain jobless and 133 000 are expected to go for their higher education.

One of the cause for hindered education can be the rising education fees which is preventing many desperate students who are looking for their bright future by taking higher education. Due to this there were  500 000 youth who did not even finished their schooling.

Loane also pointed out the fact that the probability of getting jobs for the students with FET (Further Education and Training Student Association) qualification is far lower than those without FET education. Sorting the unemployment rate according to the respective age group, the rate of unemployment between the age 15-24 found was 49.9%. Means around 3.4 million SA youths were still unemployed due to one or the other reason. And overall there were 13.2 million unemployed South African’s.

Kevin Lings - the chief economist at Stanlib said that though South Africa is striving hard to create jobs but the current scenario is still the same with educated youths having poor employment chances compared to past years. The chances of job for the youths having previous work experience were more than those without experience - StatsSA.

Upon this, Lings said that the chances for the youths to get job who are unemployed since less than a year or more are better than the one who are sitting idle since many years.  

The CEO of the Quest Staffing Solutions and a recruiter of white-collor workers - Kay Vittee, shared his views on this issue. He said youths must be totally aware about the place from where they are gaining knowledge, no matter from any learnership programmes. But it must include learning and also some temporary working environment so that the youths can gain some experience.

The Employment Tax Incentive bill presented in the parliament last month, a part of the government’s youth employment strategy was aimed at providing jobs to the freshers - said Jabulani Sikhakhane, the Treasury Department Spokesman. But these jobs were not on long term basis.

Yet another strategy the “Jobs Fund” established in 2011 was expected create around 150 000 permanent jobs. For this it had contracted with 66 projects for a period of three years that must create 93941 permanent jobs.          

The SA Chamber of Commerce had a meeting with Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Friday to discuss the chances of the ETI to create new jobs. - Pietman Roos.  

DA finance spokesman said that SA probably failed to deal with some structural issues, hence there will always remain shortage of new jobs in the market. If the government had accepted DA’s proposal than around 500 000 new jobs would have been created in the next three years.

Not only the economic market but the defence field also contributed in job creation as 1500 to 2000 fresh youths were going to join the army next year - Siphiwe Dlamini, the Defence Spokesman.

While on the other side 1000 new trainees are going to join the police force in 2014 - said Solomon Makgale , the police spokesman.