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Tougher Times Ahead

If you have young ones at home that will soon be thinking about entering the jobs market then you need to have a look at the current statistics about youth employment.

Its a lot worse than you may realise.

Unemployment Stats

South Africa is facing a serious unemployment problem, with the latest numbers showing that nearly 34% of people who desperately want jobs can’t find one.

If we also count people who have given up looking for work, the rate is even higher, at almost 43%.

This means that four out of every ten people who need work can’t get it.

The situation is expected to get worse because South Africa has a very young population. 

Youth Unemployment in Years To Come

More than 27% of the country’s 63 million people are children under the age of 15.

That’s around 17.3 million kids who will soon be looking for jobs.

On the other hand, less than 10% of the population is older than 60, meaning fewer people are retiring than young people entering the workforce.

‘around 17.3 million kids …will soon be looking for jobs’

For every three young people starting to look for work, only one older person is leaving the workforce. And that’s a real problem even if the number of jobs available stays constant.

To put it in perspective, there are about 5.8 million children between 10 and 14 years old, compared to just two million adults between 60 and 64.

This means the job market will be flooded with new workers in the next few years, and there won’t be enough jobs for all of them.

The challenge is even bigger because a lot of people have already been unemployed for a long time. They are out there looking for and not finding work

Around 76% of unemployed people have been out of work for over a year, making it even harder for them to find jobs.

Some young people might go on to study further (and we will talk about that below), but most will want to work, and with the economy struggling, there aren’t enough job opportunities.

Not Enough Jobs and Thats Before Ai Hits

Some economists say that even though the economy has shown some recovery, it’s not creating enough jobs.

There are big issues like a lack of skills, poor education, and challenges in the job market that make it hard for people to find work. South Africa’s economy is growing too slowly to create the jobs needed for the millions of young people who will soon need them.

And we all know that with the big Ai boom happening many people are studying for jobs that Ai can now do. Alternatively, Ai is helping people be more productive so that companies do not need to take on more staff. They can get more out of their existing staff members.

So, more young people are about to start looking for jobs, but there aren’t and won’t be enough to go around.

The economy is just not growing fast enough to support all these new workers, which means the unemployment problem is likely to get worse unless big changes are made to create more jobs.