Correspondent| Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) released the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the first quarter of 2019.

The report was met with deep concern by the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), as the number of unemployed young people had grown.

“Last year this time, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) reported a staggering 34.2% of persons aged 15-24 years, who were not in employment, education or training,” the NYDA stated.

NYDA executive chairperson Sifiso Mtsweni has come up with a solution urging the private and public sector institutions to raise the representation of young people in their workplace to 40%.

“We believe the scrapping of experience as a prerequisite to job placements will drastically reduce the number of unemployed graduates. The growing number of discouraged work-seekers and the number of people, who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement, needs urgent attention,” Mtsweni explained.

“The commitment by government working together with social partners to place economic growth and job creation at the centre of our national agenda is welcomed. However, we demand that the new government administration increase the speed at which it moves to resolve this dire situation.”

According to the survey, the unemployment rate in SA has increased by 0.5 of a percentage point to 27.6% compared to the fourth quarter of 2018. It is explained by a combination of two factors: the number of people in employment has declined by 237,000 to 16.3 million, while the number of people unemployed between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 has increased by 62,000 to 6.2 million.