Youth Unemployment In South Africa

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South Africa and the rest of the world is faced with dilemma of youth unemployment as well as lack of entrepreneurship. In South Africa is becoming a norm and bad habit for graduate to lose hope of getting employed within first year of graduating. The government has done its part of creating jobs and encourage youth to venture into entrepreneurship. The persistently high youth unemployment has long been one of the most pressing socioeconomic problems of South Africa. Youths do not have sufficient network to obtain information on job opportunities, as well as financial resources and mobility to seek work or relocate closer to the places where job opportunities exist (Mlatsheni, 2007; Guma, 2011; Smith, 2011). Even if they do, some of them,…show more content…
Youths often also lack ‘soft’ skills such as communication skills, personal presentation and emotional maturity (Rees, 1986; Pauw, Oosthuizen and Van der Westhuizen, 2008; National Treasury, 2011). After 20 years into democracy we still find many youth without jobs and not even trying to create jobs for themselves (self-employment). No one can really tell what the possible causes of unemployment are and what the consequences are. Unemployment has negative effect on the economy of the country and it’s GDP. On the other hand if more youth can venture into business can reduce the percentage of unemployment ant contribute positively to GDP The paper is will have an intensive look at the problem at hand and establish the roots of unemployment. This paper should also be able to address the problem and recommend on how wed can eradicate unemployment and encourage entrepreneurship. Unemployment is probably the single most pressing challenge facing South Africa today (Levinsohn, 2007, p2) and given the considerable resources invested in education by both public and private individuals, the focus on graduate unemployment is essential (Moleke,…show more content…
Confirmation of the young people’s cultural identity, upgrading their cultural values will therefore improve their spirit in the midst of difficulties. PRELIMINARY LITERATURE REVIEW The first step in conducting a study on graduate unemployment should begin with a definition of these terms. Graduate, in other literature, has been used to describe people with college education (Cosser, 2003), people who are targeted by companies in their graduate recruitment programmes (Pauw, Bhorat, Goga, Ncube & van der Westhuizen, 2006), people with higher education (Moleke, 2003) and broadly students who have graduated (Letseka, Cosser, Breier & Visser, 2010). Studies indicate that worklessness tends to be geographically concentrated. Atkinson and Kintrea (2001) through their area-effect work show that living in deprived areas of Britain poses additional problems for residents, which further cement their disadvantage. Almost all recent studies on the state of the South African labour market since the transition only briefly examine what happens to the youths. Looking at the studies that only analyse one
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