Abstract
South Africa is one of the countries with high level of unemployment in the world. Unsurprisingly, graduate unemployment grows alongside the overall unemployment rate in South Africa. Poverty and inequality are other development issues characterising South African struggling economy. Youth are the main victims of unemployment and other social ills in the country. Clearly, the massification of education in South Africa has not provided a drastic solution to unemployment. Grounded in the classical and Keynesian theory of unemployment, this paper examine youth unemployment as a development problem in South Africa. It explores youth graduates’ concerns for employment prospects. This was a qualitative study, and 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with unemployed graduates from five South African universities. The results indicate that, as graduate unemployment continues to increase in South Africa, graduates are becoming hopeless on their abilities to secure employment. They attribute unemployment to multidimensional factors including limited labour market demand, skills mismatch, and lack of work experience. This research has implications for higher education, government, and labour market. The growing graduate unemployment questions the value of higher education. As evidenced in this paper, there is a gap between higher education institutions and labour market, which leads to skills mismatch induced unemployment. Therefore, this paper concludes that government can play a role in bridging the gap between higher education and industry in order to address youth graduate unemployment. A more cooperative effort from these three key stakeholders is required to create job opportunities for graduates in South Africa.
Presenters
Zethembe MselekuLecturer, Development Studies , University of Mpumalanga, Mpumalanga, South Africa
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Education, Graduate Unemployment, South Africa, Unemployability, Youth unemployment
