No one seems to care about unemployment; except, of course, the many millions who are unemployed.
The expanded unemployment rate, including those who have given up looking for jobs which do not exist, is 43.2%. The youth unemployment figure, according to the Sunday Times, is 75%. Just think of the implications for a moment. This means that three-quarters of our young people are not working or studying and many or most of them may never work because there are not jobs available. Our economy does not grow sufficiently to increase employment opportunities.
Can you imagine the appalling effect on all these young lives? Do you appreciate the danger to our country from hopelessness and helplessness? If people do not have a stake in society, what incentive is there for them to uphold law and order, the very basis of the Rule of Law?
16th June is Youth Day. Many of the politicians wax lyrical about young people and stress how important they are to our future. After the applause and the self-satisfaction has died down, how many of those politicians will take active steps to help create an economy that will grow and thus deliver the goods for our unemployed – young and old?
How many of the politicians and, indeed, the unemployed, will ask themselves why the South African economy is such a sad failure? How many of them will ask why it is that countries like the United States of America and the United Kingdom are experiencing a crippling shortage of workers in the aftermath of the Covid crisis?
The unemployment rate in the UK stands at only 4.9%; meaning that there are only 1.7million Britons without work. There are far more jobs than that available to people who have the right skills. In the USA, the unemployment rate is 5.5%. Journalist Hilary Joffe noted recently that in our country the employment rate shows that only 38 people out of every 100 adults (14.9 million people) were in paid employment in the first quarter of 2021. Globally, the norm is closer to 60.