NATHANIEL LEE | Slight dip in joblessness does not defuse ticking time bomb

The jury is still out as to whether the slight drop in the country’s unemployment rate announced by Stats SA, is a glimmer of hope to SA’s unemployment crisis or a mirage. On Tuesday, Stats SA released the second Labour Force Survey for the period starting from April 1 to the end of June.

The figures showed that there has been a 0.3% decrease in the unemployment rate which stands at 32.6% from 32.9% in the first quarter. The reality on the ground is that there are still 7.9 million people still looking for work with the expanded definition of unemployment which includes those discouraged from seeking work, at 42.1% in the second quarter. Adding to this woeful picture, the youth unemployment rate is 61% of 15-to 24-year olds and 71% in terms of the expanded definition.

According to the World Bank, SA has the highest unemployment rate in the world with a UN report on the state of affairs describing the situation pertaining especially youth unemployment as a “ticking time bomb”.

Various reasons have been cited for the high rate of youth unemployment which include among others, population growth, lack of experience, inappropriate ways of searching for a job and lack of career guidance in schools. 

According to DA MP and shadow minister of education Baxolile Nodada, curriculum irrelevance combined with low pass rates and the consistent decline in important gateway subjects such as mathematics and science, play a massive role in the country’s unemployment crisis.

“There is a desperate need for a curriculum and grading requirement revamp that will accommodate pupils who seek to take on a more practical work route over more academic areas of further study. In addition to unemployment being a ticking time bomb, it must be said that not having a job is humiliating and damaging to one’s psyche.

“It can lubricate young people’s entry into the adult world through the financial independence a job affords them. Work can also engender a sense of purpose and value and shape a person’s identity and self-esteem. To highlight the danger posed by youth unemployment, one has to look at the ubiquitous and violent so-called service delivery protests where jobless young South Africans almost invariably occupy centre stage of the violent eruptions.

“The July 2021 riots and the recent Cape Town taxi riots also followed the same pattern. According to Duma Gqubule, a financial analyst who used to advise government, SA GDP needs to grow by 6% per year to start creating jobs for 700,000 people who enter the workforce every year.

“He further laments the fact that SA’s first generation of “Born Frees” now in the 20s to late twenties live in a country with the world’s worst unemployment rate as ‘the most heartbreaking betrayal of the promise and dreams of our liberation’.”

The fact that more than half of the country’s young people are jobless means rising levels of poverty and inequality and also fuels social ills such as crime and drug use among young people.

It is for this reason that we witness election gimmicks such as the one by populist Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi in which he committed to hiring 6,000 young people in new jobs through the Nasi Ispani programme. For sustainable solutions to defuse the unemployment time bomb, the government-in-waiting (as we have to look beyond the ANC for such a reality) has to sort out the country’s educational outcomes to be in line with the modern economy.

Higher levels of education can reduce the country’s high youth unemployment rate. According to Gareth Roberts, an economics lecturer at Wits, quality education will improve productivity, enhance economic growth which in turn, will reduce unemployment.

Only 6.6% of the unemployed had tertiary qualifications, while 2.4% of unemployed people were graduates. This serves to show that the difference in employment between people with higher education and those without is huge. The time has come for the country to stop celebrating mediocrity such as the matric pass rate while ignoring the generally poor education standards.

Likewise the slight dip in the unemployment rate is not cause for celebration but should serve as a clarion call for the improvement of education standards that will propel the country to much-needed productivity and economic growth.