South Africa’s Unemployment Catastrophe: A call for urgent action
- South Africa has the deepest and most persistent unemployment crisis in the world.
- More than 12 million South Africans want work but cannot find a job. For 17 years, 1 000 people have joined the unemployment queue every day.
- A range of major policy and governance failures have slowed growth to little more than zero, which is the primary reason for the sluggish pace of employment growth. Without accelerated economic growth no solution to the unemployment crisis is possible.
- Public employment schemes, by contrast, provide only temporary relief and will never generate the millions of jobs South Africa needs. Yet, in the past 15 years, both government and organised business have focused far more energy on special projects and initiatives than they have on the hard work needed to achieve policy reform to create millions of market-based jobs
- In this report, CDE recommends reforms in four areas to ensure that the economy generates more jobs: more employment friendly labour market regulations, fixing the skills system, facilitating the growth of dynamic, labour-absorbing small businesses, and removing obstacles to the growth of the informal sector.
- To overcome the catastrophic situation in which we find ourselves, the country must act with urgency, embrace reform and create a pathway to inclusive prosperity with millions more jobs. Failure to do so will condemn another generation to the despair and anger of joblessness.
