Youth unemployment: government looks on as disaster unfolds

3 June 2021

Solidarity today expressed its dissatisfaction regarding the government’s handling of the unemployment crisis and especially the youth unemployment crisis that South Africa is currently facing. This came after yesterday’s publication of the statistics on unemployment by Statistics South Africa. 

Although the official unemployment rate for the first quarter is 32,6%, the figure according to the expanded definition, which includes unemployed persons actively looking for a job together with the unemployed who have given up finding a job, currently stands at 43,2%. Youth unemployment is currently at an extremely worrying 74,7%, which implies that three out of every four young people do not have a job.

“Youth unemployment, which is currently estimated at between 15% and 18% worldwide, is regarded as a crisis by the World Bank. It is inconceivable that other countries with a youth unemployment rate of between 5% and 10% hold crisis conferences and implement emergency plans while the South African government does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, our contingency plan is to increase the minimum wage and to ensure that load shedding continues,” said Theuns du Buisson, economic researcher at Solidarity.

According to Du Buisson, South Africa’s rate of 74,7% discourages any long-term investor, especially because of the increase in crime, drug abuse, violence and other miseries associated with such a figure. Continued regulations and legislation are also further deterrents for foreign investors in addition to hindering any sustainable economic growth in our own country.

“The greater increase with the expanded definition of unemployment than with the ordinary definition indicates an economy in which jobseekers no longer have any hope. Our government has failed the entire South Africa. Fewer and fewer people have any confidence in their future, and what we now have is a government that not only insists on doing nothing about the biggest crisis in our country, but also insists that other role players in the private sector should not have the ability at all to tackle this crisis,” Du Buisson concluded.

Issued by Theuns du Buisson, Economic Researcher, Solidarity, 3 June 2021