Skills Mismatch Causing A High Unemployment Rate In South Africa

Skills Mismatch is a gap between ones job skill and the demands of the job market. This has become a big challenge in many countries such as South Africa being one of them. This has affected society, businesses work rates and the well-being of the youth. The average rate of unemployment is currently at 38%.

I think South Africans have come to a point where they have accepted the high unemployment rate. Statistics show that most adults under the age of 35 are unemployed this results are shocking, we ask ourselves the question what is going wrong in our youth when they leave school. We then see that over the age of 35 people are still finding it hard to find employment as the economy is very much under pressure to resolve the current issues in our society.

School leavers are finding it difficult to find jobs to further their education due to many factors such as learners are not excelling in school with good marks and not having the funds to go any further in their careers. These factors are challenging that school leaver’s face. This can lead to the youth engaging in crime, drugs and abuse. We can expect the crime to rise higher as people will find themselves in a situation that is helpless as the economy fails them. Situations like this can lead to one landing on the streets and being homeless. The root cause to this could be that the education system in schools in rural areas has very poor quality of education this could be that the teachers are not trained or qualified to teach the learners the actual subjects that are set out in the curriculum. Poor education is one of the biggest contributions to skills mismatch when one leaves school as they are not sure what they would like to pursue their careers in due to low marks as they performed poorly through their schooling years with no extra assistance to help learners achieve better results. Subjects such as mathematics and technology would be subjects that would contribute to getting employment, yet it seems to fail our education systems as these subjects are difficult for some learners to pursue. If you do not have good marks it becomes harder to take well recognised subjects in school. This seems to be one of the contributors as this increases our unemployment rate.

A small number of statistics show that students who attend university or TVET colleges that graduate are still unemployed. This questioning the quality of education in these institutes is they at standards that are too high for students to reach or do they just scrape through university by just making it. They have a qualification that goes unrecognised as they don’t have the skills to match up to the skill demand in the working world. This causes a huge rejection to one as this adds to the unemployment rate.

Companies that are hiring or agencies are finding it very challenging to fill positions that are available. The reason been is that there is a skills mismatch that are found in possible candidates, this increasing the unemployment rate further. Which is causing a huge disappointment to candidates as they think their qualification will count, but companies require experience which is hard to get if you are not getting employed by anyone. It’s said that government will invest in ways to help develop tools to resolve these issues faced.

We find it hard to believe that the unemployment rate will reduce over the next few years, as it seems to be increasing each year. Learners that are coming out of school are finding it hard to get their way into university or colleges as there is no guarantee that free education will be provided to all. This leaving specialised vacancies that requires full on skills to be left empty. In general there is an overall average in statistics when it comes to cultural groups. This indicates that there is an issue in the broader field in education as black, white, coloured, Indian and Asians are finding it hard to find jobs. With these high statistics many South Africans look for employment opportunities in other Countries. Employment abroad could cause family ties to break as they have to leave loved ones behind just to get a job. This is a big disadvantage for South Africa as we question what schools have offered these learners, so is this system going to waste as this young talent is explored elsewhere as some are just not given the opportunity.

The problem is that change needs to be made to our economy, but is government ready to make such big structural change as yet. It could be helpful if companies would employ individuals to increase the employment rate, as not much has to be done by government to help increase this rate. If businesses were able to assist with decision making when it comes to their future employment this could change statistics. There have been programmes to help deal with South Africa’s biggest challenge, but we have not seen this happen. Students are not entitled to guided career choices by some stakeholder such as the National Skills Fund and bursary providers. The qualifications that students study now are not recognised in the business world when coming out of higher institutions. There are not enough technical and service industry skills that is needed in today’s working life. These qualifications are not what companies seek for, this leading to a huge disappointment to these students who seek opportunities with their formal education that is rejected as they do not have experience in the field or the level of your qualification is not of standard. Guided career choices would be a great advantage to these learners if they were educated in this field, as I think this is not a huge focus in schools.

There is a demand for highly skilled workers but there is a huge mismatch with that as the numbers show a higher amount in low skilled workers. Graduates are more likely to go into the fields of the public sector then private sector.There is a National Skills Development Plan which is in place for when you leave school which was implemented to help learners. This is part of a development plan to discover job demands. The government needs to support the development plan for its systems to be achieved and that we can see an increase in the employment rate.

Statistics show below that 52% workers are employed and they do not have the proper qualification, 27.9% are in jobs and are under qualified and 24% were over qualified in their positions.