A new 'lost' generation marches to nowhere

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, we're mad. As South Africans we have become so numb to one of the world's worst unemployment rates that we fail to fully comprehend a looming crisis.

Our rate leapt to 26.7% this week, taking us out of our traditional 25% comfort zone and, despite appeals for jobs-rich reforms, policymakers are no closer to a breakthrough.

What does it mean? Our sub-1%-growth economy is not expanding at a rate that creates jobs and we are incapable of absorbing even the 500,000 youngsters who make it through matric annually, never mind a similar number who drop out.

The National Development Plan has a lofty goal of 6% unemployment by 2030. We are going in the opposite direction. The real crisis is among what StatsSA classifies as the youth: 16- to 34-year-olds. Two-thirds of these cannot find jobs and few will hold down a job in their lifetimes.

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If you take the expanded definition of unemployment to include those who have either, out of sheer despondency, given up looking for work, or simply cannot afford to print another CV or make it to the interview, the statistics are more frightening.

The real rate of unemployment is 36%. One out of three of us cannot find a job. And with life expectancies improving, the pressure on the state to provide some support to a growing number of citizens can only intensify.

Statistician-general Pali Lehohla this week warned that unless children under 14 received dramatic improvements in education, race-based inequality will be perpetuated. Stats SA figures suggest, in general, that white and Indian children are far better equipped for the jobs market, while growing numbers of black children are severely disadvantaged.

Unless we tackle the education crisis and properly equip millions of young people with skills the economy will need one day, another generation faces falling between the cracks.

In the short term we also have the labour conversation all wrong. It's happening among the government, business and labour. While those in work are beneficiaries of above-inflation wage hikes, an alarming number of people are being consigned to the jobs scrapheap.

The unemployed don't get invited to collective bargaining sessions.

block_quotes_start There is no safety net, no magical entrepreneurial zeal, no capital, no emergency fund block_quotes_end

There are few greater levellers than being unemployed. Anyone who has found themselves out of work will tell you how debilitating it can be. There is no romance in getting laid off, even if the romanticism around Apple's sacking of Steve Jobs was a catalyst for him to achieve greatness across multiple industries.

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me," Jobs said after returning to revolutionise the company.

PSG founder Jannie Mouton's captivating biography, And Then They Fired Me, tells how his partners at stockbrokers SMK sent him packing. It led to months of deep introspection and the creation of one of the most extraordinary growth companies in South Africa over the past 20 years.

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Mouton admits to losing his self-confidence and keeping his firing a secret. "I was confused and depressed. And then I realised the future is in my hands, and in my hands only."

Jobs and Mouton are inspiring figures. But they are the exceptions.

For most South Africans, getting laid off is calamitous. About as glamourous as going parachuting and finding the ripcord doesn't work. There is no safety net, no magical entrepreneurial zeal, no capital, no emergency fund. Just despondency.

As the jobs crisis grows, the government announced this week it was proceeding with plans for nuclear power, dismissed by critics as costly and unnecessary. Similar criticism has been levelled against a new presidential jet. Inkwazi, the Boeing 737-700 acquired new 15 years ago, is only halfway through its serviceable life.

When billionaire entrepreneur Warren Buffett bought his in 1989, he named it Indefensible. What might the growing number of South African unemployed call ours?

Whitfield is an award-winning financial journalist and broadcaster