Plans to incentivise unemployed youth
The youth find it difficult to secure jobs in South Africa and some of these young people have become discouraged from participating in the labour market.
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As the levels of youth unemployment reach alarming levels, the government recently announced that it would be looking at incentivising discouraged work-seekers and employers to address the high numbers of those without work. The deputy president, David Mabuza said this when he responded to oral questions during a virtual sitting of the National Council of Provinces.
“Moving forward and working with our social partners, it will be important to find practical measures of incentivising further discouraged young work-seekers and also scaling up our incentives to employers in both the public and private sectors to employ young people to gain a foothold and the requisite experience.” Recent unemployment statistics revealed a bleak picture for young people, with 64.4% of those aged between 15 to 24 being unemployed, and 42.9% of those aged between the ages of 25 and 35 finding themselves out of work.
Mabuza said the government recognised that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on efforts to create jobs, particularly for the youth and people with disabilities. Since the advent of Covid-19, the share of young people under 35 years old in all employment levels has fallen from 56% before the pandemic to 50% today. “Among the concrete measures is to ensure that there is the high absorption capacity of young people and women, and set-asides in sectors such as agriculture and agro-processing, mining, tourism, the oceans economy and service industries,” Mabuza said.
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At the recently held Fourth Human Resource Development Council Summit, social partners agreed on the urgent need to address the issue of young people that drop out at various points of their schooling prior to attaining their matric qualification.
“We further agreed that our response should be comprehensive enough to ensure that we equip young people with skills that are relevant, and will close the prevalent gap of skills required and those available in the labour market. “We are optimistic that through our coordination of the Human Resource Development Council, we will be able to find workable, long-term solutions to the skills gap. “The importance of pragmatic public-private partnerships cannot be emphasised enough to empower young people, for whom economic emancipation remains a deferred dream,” said Mabuza.