Disastrous unemployment rate points to urgent need for economic policy change
16 May 2023
ActionSA believes South Africa’s sustained disastrously high unemployment rate – with the broad unemployment rate now at 42.4%, and the youth unemployment rate for those aged up to 24 years at a catastrophic 71.2% – highlights the urgent need for the government to change its approach to the economy and find new solutions to create jobs and lift people out of poverty.
Despite repeated promises to ignite the economy since 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa and his ANC government have failed to create jobs. Instead, President Ramaphosa's economic policies have seen the largest expansion of South Africa's unemployment rate in recent years, with a possible recession underway due to the country’s increasing levels of load shedding and malfunctioning logistics system.
The growing youth unemployment rate is a crisis with nearly three out of four recent school-leavers (those below the age of 25) being unemployed in South Africa today. This means that an entire generation is pushed towards state dependency through social grants instead of being able to empower themselves.
This is a combined result of the economic slowdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, endemic Stage 6 loadshedding, and an education system that has left 8 out of 10 Grade 4 learners functionally literature according to a study released today.