A development think-tank has called for urgent policy reform, urging the government to accelerate labour-intensive growth to arrest the runaway problem of youth unemployment in SA.
The Centre for Development Enterprise (CDE), an independent policy analysis and advocacy organisation, said unless young people join the ranks of the employed work force in larger numbers soon, “politics will continue to fracture and become increasingly dysfunctional, and human potential will be wasted”.
Hopes of achieving a more inclusive, stable, and prosperous country will “remain merely pipedreams”.
According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) released recently, unemployment in the first quarter of 2021 rose from 32.5% to 32.6%, the highest since the survey began in 2008.
It said 9-million, or 43.6% of those aged between 15 and 34, were not in employment, education or training.
The overall youth unemployment rate is at 57.5%. The cabinet said in a statement last week that it “noted” the first quarter results.
The economy has been battered by the global Covid-19 pandemic, contracting 7% in 2020, and resulting in the loss of more than 1.4-million jobs as businesses shut their doors during the lockdowns imposed to combat the spread of coronavirus.
Labour federation Cosatu in May called on the government and the business sector to move with speed in implementing the economic recovery and reconstruction plan, to address SA’s stubborn socioeconomic challenges.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the plan in October 2020, which hinges on an expanded public employment programme, a R1-trillion infrastructure effort mostly leveraged from the private sector, a pledge to accelerate energy generation and a raft of structural economic reforms.
In a Youth Day statement, the CDE said Covid-19 turned what was already a crisis into a catastrophe.
“The severe 7% GDP contraction suffered last year prompted a huge increase in the proportion of jobless young people,” the organisation said, adding that being unemployed affected a person’s future employability.
“Employment is a form of education and training, providing workers with knowledge, skills, discipline, networks and other capabilities that cannot be received through educational instruction.”
The CDE noted that even among the working youth more than 27.6%, or 1.4-million, were informally employed, pointing to further disadvantages experienced by the youngest segments of the workforce.
Formal jobs
“A formal job is much more likely to be a sustained route out of poverty than an informal job, given the importance of on-the-job training for future employability,” the CDE said.
“Taken together, these numbers reflect an ugly truth: this is no country for young people.
“As the politicians celebrate Youth Day in 2021 it is important to appreciate the policy choices they have made which have resulted in a catastrophic situation facing the vast majority of young South Africans,” the organisation said.
“Our current approach to economic growth and jobs as well as education is failing young people. As a matter of urgency, we need to rethink our approach to the labour market, especially to absorb unskilled young jobseekers into formal jobs.”
The CDE stressed that “policy reform is urgently required”.
“If we are to make a significant dent in these catastrophic youth unemployment levels, we have to change the rules and regulations that shape how our economy functions so that it grows much faster and creates jobs at a much faster rate than was the case long before Covid-19 struck.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Amnesty International SA executive director Shenilla Mohamed referred to the country’s education system as “broken and unequal”, making it near impossible for youth, no matter their background, to have an opportunity for a better future.
Mohamed said before the pandemic, SA’s education system was already characterised by failing infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms and relatively poor educational outcomes while perpetuating inequality and, as a result, failing too many of its children, with the poor hardest hit.
SA is now officially in the midst of the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic with an ever increasing number of infections and concern about the rising number of cases in schools.
“SA’s schooling system is so under-equipped that the pandemic has all but ended education for many pupils, especially those from already disadvantaged communities,” Mohamed said.
“We are calling on the government to learn the lessons of what worked and did not work over the past year-and-a-half and ensure this time round that all children have access to adequate learning and that the education system does not continue to be broken and unequal.
“We cannot expect every young person to have an opportunity to build a better life for themselves and society in the future if the government does not ensure that they uphold their right to decent education now.”
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