The high incidence of long-term unemployment among both young people and adults reflects the entrenched structural weaknesses in the South African labour market due to the mismatch between skills and available jobs, according to a report released by Statistics South Africa on Monday.

Long-term unemployment among both the youth and adults is estimated to have been over 65% for most years since the recession, according to the report which focuses on the youth and the national and provincial labour market.

Of the 31.5-million working-age people aged 15 to 64 years in 2008, 18.2-million were young people aged 15 to 34 years, while 13.3-million were adults aged 35 to 64 years.

Population growth over subsequent years meant that by 2015 the working-age population stood at 35.8-million, of which 19.7-million (55%) were young people and 16.1-million were adults.

In 2015 as many as 3.6-million young people were unemployed as opposed to 6.2-million who had jobs. At the same time 1.9-million adults were unemployed and actively looking for work, while 9.2-million adults were employed.

According to Stats SA this highlights the challenges faced by the youth in finding employment, given that as many as 55% of young people actively looking for jobs have education levels below matric, while an additional 36.4% have only a matric qualification.

Even among those young people who are employed, educational levels pose a serious constraint to their position on the occupational ladder for many. This is despite the improvement in the education profile of employed youth over the period 2008 to 2015.

In 2015 as many as 44.5% had an education level below matric, while an additional 36.9% had only matric. Relatively few employed young people (21.2%) had a tertiary education.

Large differences in the education profile by population group resulted in only 13.1% of the black African youth and 10.5% of the coloured youth having skilled occupations, while one in every three Indian or Asian young people (36.2%) and 53.4% of whites had skilled occupations.

Bearing the brunt

Young people in the South African labour market bore the brunt of the recent financial crisis, according to the report.

Over the period 2008 to 2015, the 1-million rise in employment was solely on account of job gains among adults, while among the youth job losses of 221 000 occurred.

"Over the period 2008 to 2015, key labour market rates deteriorated by a larger margin among youth compared with adults, and the frustration of not finding employment has led many young people to become discouraged and exit the labour force altogether," said Pali Lehohla, statistician general for Stats SA.

The report found, for instance, that in 2009 youth unemployment rates were 21 to 25 percentage points higher than those of adults in all provinces except in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

In 2010 the rate among the youth rose to over 40.3% in the Eastern Cape, 40.5% in the Free State and 41.1% in Mpumalanga.

In the aftermath of the recession a gap emerged between the youth and adult labour forces, mostly on account of the relatively large increases in employment levels among adults, according to the report.

Although the adult labour force is stronger than that of the youth, inactivity among young people is substantially higher than among adults as many prefer to continue their education in the hope of enhancing their labour market prospects at a later stage.

As a result of the global recession, the unemployment rate among the youth rose from 32.7% in 2008 to 36.1% in 2011 and remained between 35% and 37% in subsequent years.

News24.com