THE story of South Africa’s past and present failures, and the seeds of its future conflicts, are contained in a single declarative sentence on page 13 of the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS).
"Approximately 3.3-million of the 10.4-million youth aged 15-24 years were not in employment, education or training in the third quarter of 2013." This means nearly a third of those most in need of guidance, support and opportunities are being systematically let down.
And as these young people grow older, their futures look increasingly bleaker.
The data show that the longer you are without a job, the less likely you are to ever get one.
According to Statistics South Africa, which publishes the quarterly survey and other employment-related data, of the 33.5-million people of working age, some 4.6-million are unemployed.
On top of that another 2.2-million have given up on finding a job and, in the cavalier and cruel designation of the statisticians, no longer even count as unemployed — as if this were their choice.
The unemployment crisis — for how else can you describe 6.8-million people with no real hope of fending for themselves — is evidence of what Andrew Donaldson, deputy director-general in the Treasury, calls a "co-ordination failure" with interconnected market and policy and administrative factors at play.
This "co-ordination failure" manifests in three ways:
• Young people are leaving school without adequate numeracy and literacy skills;
• Employers are shutting out high-potential youngsters because the school-leaving certificate is no longer an indicator of either ability or potential; and
• The economy is creating far too few new jobs.
However, as bleak as the situation is, and as intractable as the problems appear, the solution is staring us in the face.
It doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the legislative framework, as often called for by business, nor does it require that business be bludgeoned into submission by increasingly onerous penalties, as called for by some in government and labour.
It takes money, of which there is plenty; political will to implement policies, which is in short supply, and corporate willingness to act in the interests of positive social change — the lack of which often makes politicians look positively proactive.
Nicola Galombik, executive director at Yellowwoods, the investment holding company that founded Harambee — a youth employment accelerator supported by the government’s Jobs Fund, which prepares first-time workers for jobs in the formal sector — says that the key is to create a virtuous cycle of employers seeing value in employing young work seekers.
She says while the government needs to implement its many youth unemployment initiatives more effectively, the private sector also needs to step up its commitment and change its employment practices to absorb and support young people.
In partnership with the state’s R9bn Jobs Fund, Harambee plans to have, by the end of the year, placed 4,500 18- to 24-year-olds from poor or indigent backgrounds in formal sector employment in six economic sectors.
By the end of next year, this number will stand at 10,000.
Harambee has to date focused on financial services, hospitality, retail and call centres, but will be shifting some of its focus to getting people ready for artisanal and other technical training, as these skills are going to be in great demand when the government’s infrastructure programme gathers momentum.
Ms Galombik says Harambee’s success was driven by employers realising that business success and sustainability are linked to growing the talent pool and improving retention and progression.
This means that employers must change the way they recruit and manage people to support young first-time workers rather than seeing youth unemployment as a problem to be dealt with through corporate social investment (CSI) programmes.
Ms Galombik acknowledges the numeracy and conversational English of young people leaving school falls short of levels required by even entry-level jobs, but says this is not the biggest problem the youngsters face in finding employment. "The biggest barrier is socioeconomic," she says.
"Young people from poor communities do not have the social networks needed to get their first jobs, they do not have the financial resources to pay for transport or internet cafes in order to look for work, and they have incredibly limited and poor information about what will be required of them when they do land a position," she says.
"Nor do they know what jobs will suit them or where they will be most likely to succeed."
Vocational training is also essential. Success does not only depend on having the right skills and a lack of behavioural readiness for work — being on time, being able to manage themselves and relationships with managers, co-workers and customers, and fitting into workplace culture — is often a bigger barrier.
This is borne out by Harambee’s experience of assessing more than 40,000 young people for its programme.
The organisation found that the correlation between numeracy scores and learning potential was very weak.
More than 60% of the those assessed had the learning potential required for entry-level jobs and yet more than half of these candidates had failed numeracy tests for entry-level positions.
This is a real problem for candidates: out of the 35 employers that Harambee places people in, 34 use numeracy tests as part of the selection process.
A core part of Harambee’s programme is boosting the numeric proficiency of candidates to acceptable levels where required. This is done through a short, intensive bridging programme.
Ms Galombik says that the people Harambee has placed in employment so far have disproved the myth of lazy youngsters.
The reality is actually one of people who are eager to work and very committed when they get their jobs.
This, alongside the fact that matriculation is not necessarily a reliable indicator of future success, is the central message to prospective employers.
Mr Donaldson agrees that a focus on getting young people into work is vital.
"From a lot of (the projects) the Jobs Fund is supporting, the evidence is that we have to find ways of getting young people into work early.
"If we do so, the probability of them having a career is far higher. If they find a way into work early they will be much better off their whole lives."
Mr Donaldson says that he is pleased with the success of the Jobs Fund so far, even though, he says, the initiative had got off to a slow start.
The fund was set up to co-finance projects and initiatives aimed at sustainable job creation and overcoming the transition between school and work.
Unlike the expanded public works programme, which supports temporary public sector jobs, the Jobs Fund partners with the private sector and nongovernment organisations.
It has four focus areas: namely enterprise development, infrastructure investment, support for work seekers, and institutional capacity building.
It is supporting a wide range of projects which will be evaluated in depth in order to co-ordinate a better understanding of labour market dynamics and the effectiveness of alternative interventions.
Mr Donaldson says that the fund will lead to the creation of 150,000 jobs — a target which he believes is realistic.
He sees it as leveraging private sector innovation in creating employment for the young as the "government cannot aspire to be the only, or even the main, solution to the employment challenge".
And, as unemployment data show, the private sector either cannot, or will not, solve the problem on its own, either.
This melding of the capacities of the private and public sectors, as evidenced by the Jobs Fund and projects like Harambee, is surely the path to the social compact and collective action needed to deal with the powder keg of having millions of young people living in abject conditions of poverty and deprivation.
As Ms Galombik says: "We can debate the right laws, the wrong laws, whether there are too many or too few laws, their execution, but what we know is that to tackle youth unemployment as a nation we need a very deliberate effort from government and the private sector to each do their bit well."
• The writer’s spouse works for Yellowwoods and is a former Harambee MD.
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