Structural Unemployment In South Africa

Unemployment data shows a maintained and, increasing unemployment rate in South Africa since 1975 - in spite of the business
cycle upswings in the periods 1978 - 1981, 1983 - 1984, 1986 - 1989 and since the middle of 1993. Unemployment growth appears to be at regular and normality. This demonstrates that a huge part of the South African unemployment doesn’t respond much to cyclical changes in the level of production and economic activity.

However, this unfortunately means that the majority of the South African unemployment rate is of permanent nature. In other words,

South Africa is mainly characterized by structural unemployment. Cyclical variations in production and employment, actual amount to leads to underlying, enduring unemployment.

Mohr and Rogers (1988: 280) states that the pattern and amount of aggregate demand is also very important. Even if the level of aggregate demand remains unchanged there may be noteworthy movements in the structure of aggregate demand sectors that might cause unemployment to rise. A structural depreciation in the growth of aggregate demand has also been introduced as a major cause of the rise in structural unemployment in South Africa.

Another relating factor is the long-term fall in the uprise production of the South African economy since the 1960s. Many factors may have lead to this variance in periods: the boom that occurred after the war in international trade and commodity exports slowly depreciated the gold price stopped flowing after 1980 ,trade and financial penalty, disinvestment and political disruptions hampered or decreased economic growth; balance of payments restrictions put a ceiling on the growth rate that could be maintained over long periods ;

The degree of underdevelopment restricted the availability of suitable economic factors to lead growth in the modern sector of the

Skills transfer and job preparation for those who have the skills but are unemployed because of lack of experience this should mainly focus on the unemployed graduates Vocational training (cold be implemented through programs or vocational schools ) for out of school youth and unemployed people without any skills 4. Refocus from BEE(mainly because after 20 years of democracy current BEE programs do not assit with unemployment) to Entrepreneurship development as government policy for redressing South Africa’s inequality. 5. Focus on creating a very large small business sector in South Africa 6. Provide funding to entrepreneurs enabling creativity and productivity, assisting others to start their own businesses

Supporting informal-sector operators as a large number of unemployment originate from this sector

7. Prevent government officials, especially the ruling party from being directors in companies that do business with government in order to root out tender entrepreneurship and corruption. Changes in tax structure could also be implemented 8. Establish business incubators and technology