Youth unemployment continues to spiral despite many interventions
Despite the immense scale of focusing on policy, legislation, programme implementation and resource allocation – youth unemployment has worsened, the Labour Market Research Seminar was told yesterday (28 February 2024).
This was according to two independent research reports presented by the Nelson Mandela University (NMU) as well as the Social Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
According to the two research reports there are some factors contributing to the failure of government interventions in creating employment, these include policy incongruence in some areas, e.g. targeting, means testing etc.; significant lack of integration and coordination across programmes; insufficient monitoring and evaluation of some policies and programmes – mainly output reporting as well as lack of coordination and experience sharing within government, that is vertically for example province to national and horizontally, department to department.
“One of the major challenges in the SA economy is the introduction of new policies before full implementation of existing ones," said co-presenters from the HSRC, Shirin Motala and Dr. Bongiwe Mncwango.
According to Dr Florah Modiba from Nelson Mandela University, some challenges faced by employment schemes include difficulty in coordinating different projects because implementation is being done by different public bodies, difficulty in ensuring fair recruitment, and poor record keeping by public bodies which makes it difficult to measure outputs.
The seminar held under the theme: Interventions in facilitating youth employment, was aimed at unveiling the two research reports commissioned by the Department as well as engaging stakeholders in looking at government interventions in the employment of youth.
In delivering her keynote address, Acting Director General Onke Mjo said: “We meet at a time when our country's economy is taking heavy punches from different angles, we have endured slow, if not stagnant economic growth lately, we have endured high unemployment and underemployment, and we have endured several other challenges. Indeed, all these socio-economic challenges bring realism to many, as such we need to devise urgent measures that will cushion the most vulnerable against the effects of economic meltdown"
In closing, the Acting DG urged stakeholders to work together as it bears fruit. “Working together is seen bearing fruit in the interventions that we made to create jobs through many public-private–partnerships such as the Temporary-Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) during the pandemic".
The studies recommended the following:
- Centralisation of reporting on all employment schemes,
- Re-organisation of the schemes guided by the ecosystem approach,
- Ongoing monitoring and evaluation process,
- Schemes to make youth digital savvy– for own employment creation,
- All tertiary qualifications to have a full year of work experience, and
- Department of Employment and Labour to track active steps in data collection, collation and curation for use in decision-making, monitoring and evaluation.
Mjo directed the department's officials to engage the research findings and proposals so that the Department can do better in employment creation and retention.
For more information, contact:
Teboho Thejane
Departmental Spokesperson
Cell: 082 697 0694
E-mail: Teboho.Thejane@labour.gov.za
