By Zengeziwe Msimang
The youth unemployment crisis strikes at the heart of South Africa’s socio-economic challenges. Often referred to as a ticking time bomb, youth unemployment robs our country of an opportunity for innovation and growth, powered by the potential of youth by keeping talented, engaged and innovative young people locked out of the economy.
The Quarterly Labour Force Statistics released in May by StatsSA reflect the reality we see all around us, youth unemployment for ages 15 to 34 has worsened and now sits at a staggering 45.5%. Nearly two-thirds (35.5%) of young South Africans are not in employment, education, or training.
As it stands young people face multifaceted and systemic barriers to entering the labour market. In their journey to work, they are forced to navigate a maze of broken systems; from a poorly performing education system to a labour market shaped by jobless growth and massive disruption. The reality is that a straight line from school to university to a first job no longer exists.
Further, when you view this crisis through the lens of gender inequality, we see that in South Africa the barriers that young women face to getting employment remain higher and harder than those for young men. This is just one of the symptoms of a pervasive global issue with gender inequality also affecting women’s ability to access healthcare, welfare and legal rights.
When it comes to the world of work, women have less time to search for employment, more childcare responsibilities, less money to apply for jobs, less time to volunteer and network, and a higher risk of harassment if they do get the job interview. Furthermore, women are also less likely to have some of the tangible and intangible attributes valued for work, such as a high school qualification, a driver’s licence, and confidence in looking for and finding work. Research data from the SA Youth platform, which has over four million young people registered on it, 66% of whom are women, shows that women are 6-8% less likely to be working than men and are also likely to earn less than their male counterparts.
This, despite the fact that, when it comes to education, women outperform their male counterparts across the board. For every 100 young men in South Africa under 35 with a matric, there are 112 young women with the same. Even more starkly, there are 50% more young women than young men with degree-equivalents or higher. Yet, the data shows that young men and young women once in work perform at the same level. There is little difference in their likelihood of success, ability to perform in the job, or retention of work.
In a time when so many young people remain excluded from the economy, we must be intentional about creating opportunities for young women to sustain themselves and find innovative ways to give them a leg up. How do we begin to level the playing fields for young women in a landscape where the economy is projected to grow at a mere 1% this year and formal work is hard to come by?
As the formal economy continues on its sluggish path, we realise that we have to look outside of it as a source of work for young people and women specifically. Informal enterprise holds a host of opportunities for young women to generate an income and establish their own informal businesses, which in turn could create employment. The informal sector accounts for 18.6% of total employment in South Africa. Harambee’s research indicates that there are approximately 1.2 million young micro-entrepreneurs in the informal sector, with 88% being black Africans and 40% being youth.