#EmpowerTheYouth

Efforts to help fix Youth Unemployment in South Africa 


Youth unemployment is one of South Africa’s most intractable challenges, made worse by COVID-19. Prior to the pandemic the unemployment rate (including people who had given up looking for work) aged between 15-24 year old. It is crucial to understand what interventions are working. But how do we evaluate whether youth employment programmes are successful, particularly when unemployment is caused by the structure of the economy.


The obvious answer, of course, is whether a programme results in a young person getting employed.

This is logical and easy to measure. It can easily be linked to the release of funding to programmes. And it allows for programmes to be compared . This was done in a systematic programmes . Job placement says more about demand than supply. A young person’s ability to find a job doesn’t depend only on their skills but also on whether the labour market is creating sufficient demand for employees. No matter how well a programme trains and supports a young person, if there are limited jobs, young people are unlikely to be employed.

Second, if a programme is getting young people into jobs even though job numbers are not growing as in South Africa  these placements may be at the expense of other work seekers.

Individual programmes can get people into jobs while the overall youth unemployment rate stays stagnant or rises. In the context of a rapidly contracting economy in the Covid-19 era, this is a particularly important argument against job placement as the only measure of a programmes success.

Third, using this single indicator takes attention away from longer-term pathways towards sustainable livelihoods. Many jobs in South Africa, especially at entry level, are insecure, part time or casual. There’s a risk of disregarding whether a job is decent and has prospects for learning and career development. Young people typically do not stay in jobs. This is either because the job is not a good fit or is for a short term only. Other barriers, such as transport costs, also account for why they are unable to stay in jobs. 

The fact that South Africa is facing a stagnant economy for some time, it is crucial that funders, policy makers and those working on youth employment interventions evaluate and invest in programmes on the basis of their ability to keep young people positively oriented towards the labour market. The programmes should help improve their employability, even if the young participant is not yet able to find an actual job. Please like and  share your thoughts 

Comments

  1. MR KENNEDY Matsika22 September 2021 at 05:04

    Great article indeed. It will surely take a long period of time to create so much opportunies in SA. Nevertheless, the youth must try by all means to create their own, through the power of social media.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thabang Sithole22 September 2021 at 11:36

    I believe that as the youth, we should have our own initiatives rather to keep on waiting for callbacks for interviews not knowing whether it was a success or. So us taking our own stand will help us notice sometimes we have to take our stand

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nomfundo Zwane22 September 2021 at 14:24

    This is a great read...very powerful message. We live in a country of corruption, for a graduate to get a job one must be connected to people in power. Well I came to the realization that self education is important, we need to use our skills to fight unemployment, start our business and ourselves as brands.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown22 September 2021 at 22:25

    Well articulated article. Unemployment remains a dire problem in our country and with the pandemic it has just entered one of the worst phases yet. Together with our economy our families are particularly struggling as well. To find a job us no longer just set out to the youth, but even those to get back into the job market who have been retrenched or laid off.
    Our country is in fire state.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fidele Makusa23 September 2021 at 00:45

    Such great articles👌🏻 Unemployment is one of the biggest issues young people are fighting against and it’s very sad to look all the sacrifices they’re putting when it comes to study

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous23 September 2021 at 02:37

    Great article. As young people we really need to fight unemployment.

    ReplyDelete

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