SowetanLive reports that according to former statistician-general Dr Pali Lehohla, the government has not shown any will to deal with high youth unemployment.

He was commenting on Stats SA's Quarterly Labour Force Survey covering the second quarter of the year, which showed a slight 0.6% drop in unemployment. Unemployment decreased to 33.9% in the second quarter from 34.5% recorded in the first quarter. According to Stats SA, this equated to 648,000 new jobs created during this period. Despite this positive news, unemployment of youth (aged 15 to 34) increased by 2% (or 92,000) to 4.8-million from the first quarter. Lehohla said this was indicative of a government that had failed. “There are fewer young people employed today compared to 2008. When you look at this you realise the situation is deteriorating so rapidly. A young person today is more desperate. From 2001-2008 there was an increase in the employment of young people with two million less employed compared to 2008. This changed around 2018 and at the very least government should have kept the figures the same instead of the drop,” Lehohla observed. He went on to lament: “They (government) bark at the moon and that’s what they do every year. All the policies discussed are not worth the paper they are written on and the policies they are pursuing won’t address the issues we’re facing.”

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Nomazima Nkosi at SowetanLive

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