Give us a break by giving us jobs, youth plead

The Progressive Youth Alliance – which includes the ANC Youth League, Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and young workers – marked tomorrow’s Youth Day celebrations with a march yesterday against youth unemployment, calling for the scrapping of unrealistic experience requirements for entry level jobs.

The alliance members gathered at Beyers Naude Park in the Johannesburg city centre to deliver a memorandum of demands to the minerals council and the provincial government to say that the current 55.2 % unemployment rate among the youth was unacceptable.

According to the South African Students Congress (Sasco) Gauteng chairperson Luvuyo Barnes, the unemployment rate among the youth was higher irrespective of education level.

“These young people [aged 15- 34 years] who are categorised as not in employment, education or training are considered to be disengaged from both work and education,” said Barnes.

He said the need to create a responsive economy for the skills and entrepreneurial revolution was necessary in response to the 286,000 job losses experienced in the first quarter of this year.

“The early retirement packages initiated by government as a way to reduce the public sector wage bill simply means government is retrenching and choosing not to employ in vacancies created,” said Barnes.

“The youth must be targeted and employed in these vacant posts to reduce the high rate of youth unemployment and deal with staff shortages in the sector.”

National Employers’ Association of South Africa (Neasa) chief executive, Gerhard Papenfus, described the current status quo among young people as worrisome.

“Throughout the country, only one in three young people of working age is employed,” said Papenfus. “This distressing statistic does not only indicate the limited earnings potential and future prospects of these youths but is worsened by subdued business growth and unsustainable pressure on government’s social programmes.”

Recent figures from Statistics South Africa show increasingly more young people are out of work.

“The official unemployment rate has risen from 27.1% to 27.6% for the period from January to March 2019.

“The unofficial unemployment rate is closer to 40%,” said Papenfus.

He said an estimated 237,000 people lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2019 with the overall number of unemployed standing at 6.2 million.

“Although government is still adamant that it will meet its objective of creating nearly 300,000 jobs per annum, this target is not realistic,” he said.

– gcinan@citizen.co.za

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