Table of Contents
There are different types of unemployment that we face as a country. Thus structural, frictional, cyclical and seasonal unemployment.
Cyclical unemployment exists when individuals exists when individuals lose their jobs as a result of a downward in aggregate demand.
Structural unemployment is unemployment that results from industrial reorganization, typically due to technological change rather than fluctuations in demand and supply.
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Frictional unemployment exists in any economy due to people in a process of moving from one job to another, this is the most common type of unemployment that is faced in South Africa where by the youth being in the process of searching for the job they enjoy the most they shift to different jobs till they settle in one that they feel comfortable and happy with.
Seasonal unemployment means that demand for a specific kind of work and workers change with the change in season, such as agricultural industry wherein the demand for workers in more in during harvesting than is required in other months in a year.
Structural change of the South African economy has been taking place continuously since the advent of democracy in 1994. The demand for relatively less educated, unskilled labor, for example in primary industries such as agriculture and mining, has continued to decline. This explains why there is a greater demand for older, highly educated workers. They have longer years of work experience and are more skilled to match the requirements of employers, particularly in economically advanced provinces like Gauteng and the Western Cape (Derek Yu, Atoko Kasongo, Maria Moses, 2016)
According to the Budget Speech (2019) the finance minister stated under job creation and labor affairs that over the three year period, R61,4 billion is allocated to public employment programs, including expanded public work programs between April 2009 and March 2018 this program created 4 million jobs of varying duration, and aim to create another 2 million jobs by the end of 2020/21.
The government introduced the employment tax incentives this helped to boost job creation. It was introduced on 1 January 2014 to share the cost of hiring young, inexperienced workers between the employers and the government. The incentive was received and extended in 2016 and 2018, there was a review conducted on the incentive and the review founded that the number of employees and employment growth rate increased significantly in firms claiming the incentive. Effects of this incentive where most pronounced in firms with less than 50 employees, though positive effects held for all firm sizes , hence this all shows how the government has been trying to reduce the rate on unemployment in the country but still fails to reach its target.
Conclusion
The nature of the main stream providers and competition in that industry has for decades now, meant that contraversly sells and the public space for a technical and an in-depth attempt at solving social problems has been virtually non-existent. It is for that reason, that again and again we see the headline of unemployment being too high on newspapers, television news and social medias, but almost never get a proper break down of the make-up of unemployment in South Africa.
It our belief that prior to the solution being found, the problem must be properly and close to completely understood, and we are nowhere near to understanding the problem of unemployment until we understand that there are various types of unemployment each with various symptoms and causes and each with unique remedies and approaches to finding a solution. The unemployment problem has existed in South Africa for years the government has been trying to solve it but has never managed to eliminate it permanently thus unemployment will always be an issue in the South African economy hence the only thing that the government can do at this stage is to try stabilizing is so that it does not increase rapidly leading to the downfall of the economy.
The government again will not be able to eliminate unemployment to zero unemployment rate because it will lead to rapid increase in the inflation rate leading to hyper-inflation which will be a major decline of the economy, hence the government will never attain the targeted unemployment rate because of many problems that it will encounter when trying to do so. Problems that the government faces in South Africa when trying to solve unemployment might be the individual education levels thus most jobs require people to have knowledge and skills for a certain type of jobs but individual do not possess such skills.
The government cannot control the frictional unemployment as it can not be able to force a person to stay of on a job that they do not want, it can not also control seasonal unemployment as seasons come and go hence people are hired during peak seasons and do not have any jobs during bad seasons. As the government works towards solving unemployment and reaching its target there are also powerful labor laws which it has implemented for example the minimum wage this leads to employers hiring a few workers than anticipated. Hence at the end the government is unable to solve or eliminate unemployment.
