Without the necessary reforms, South Africa will not be able to reduce unemployment according to a new report by the Bureau for Economic Research.
South Africa will not be able to reduce unemployment without further structural reforms such as relaxing regulations to make doing business easier, according to a new report by the Bureau for Economic Research.
The report by BER economists Helanya Fourie and Claire Bisseker said that in South Africa, only four out of ten working-age adults are employed.
“Faster economic growth is the obvious answer. But without the necessary reforms, growth alone will not reduce unemployment at the scale required. South Africa’s unemployment rate has remained above 20% since the early 1990s, which, for a country that has avoided war or economic collapse, is almost without parallel.”
The report said decades of weak schooling for the majority, and a growth path that increasingly relies on capital and skills, are among the reasons that have left a large share of working-age South Africans locked out of the modern economy. “When conditions improve, it takes time for the effects to trickle down to the least skilled and most marginalised,” the authors write.
