The link between education and (un)employment
There appears to be a positive correlation between unemployment and education, with the unemployed consisting largely of individuals with a matric or lower level of education. The more skilled individuals are, the more likely they are to be employed. This is a challenge for South Africa because, owing to the historical reasons painted earlier, a large sector of the population is unskilled4. Given the correlation between education and probability of employment, this suggests a very low likelihood of this sector of the population being employed. This makes the situation highly emotive and political. As a result, it’s often difficult to effectively and objectively deal with the problem because those involved may be either motivated to remain on the ‘politically correct’ side of the story or, in some instances, are simply apathetic.
The skills shortage gap
To exacerbate the situation, the primary sectors of the economy that absorb unskilled labour, such as mining and agriculture, have been shedding jobs in recent years. The economy has been favouring secondary and tertiary sectors, which tend to absorb skilled labour. There is also a massive shortage of intermediate-level skills of the type that are often required by secondary sectors such as manufacturing and services. These are skills obtained at a Further Education and Training (FET) level. The shortage is partly a result of low perceptions of vocational training and education. For historical reasons, South Africans hold a university degree in higher esteem than an FET qualification (for example, a certificate or diploma), which results in fewer students pursuing FET qualifications. And in many cases, the quality of the training obtained at these colleges is insufficient to meet current demand, let alone future demand.
The danger is that South Africa will sit with highly skilled elites at the one end, low employment opportunities for unskilled workers at the other, and a hollowing-out in the middle. We are already seeing, for instance, that manufacturing is underperforming, as reflected by the 4.1% year-on-year decrease in April 20175.
Exposure to the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Will upskilling programmes meet the mark?
But is that really the crux of our problem for the future? Google ‘skills development in South Africa’ and you will invariably stumble on the work of Suzanne Hattingh. Hattingh is more than a skills development specialist. She’s someone who has thought long and hard about what South Africa will require to meet the challenges of an interconnected future and compete within a rapidly changing global labour market. Right now, she is deeply concerned. South Africa has been in overdrive in its efforts to address the employment problems of our youth. There has been a massive effort to create a widespread upskilling effort. Her concern is that unless we understand how dramatically the future of work is changing globally, these programmes could fall short of the mark.
We need to talk – industry to policymaker, employer to trainer. We need to think carefully about what it would mean to get us all on the same page.
The impact of automation on skills requirements
We may not know exactly what’s coming but we know what’s almost here because it’s already creating ripples throughout the global work community. Top on the list of concerns is not just a continuation of the rapid rate of automation that has swept the world of work over the last decade, but something that is being heralded as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Technology has evolved to the point where it can fuse robotics and digital with artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and the Internet. This means we can now do far more than simply automate jobs; we can actually change the way that people and living things organise themselves, regenerate themselves, and interact with the world around them6. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution bearing down on us, we have no choice but to consider how our world of work in South Africa is going to meld with the global world of work.
South Africa, along with Kenya, is probably more exposed to the disruptions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution than other African nations7. Indeed, information and communication technology (ICT) intensity has increased by 26% over the last decade and it’s anticipated that 41% of all work activities in South Africa will be susceptible to automation. At this rate, by 2020, 39% of the core skills required across occupations will have changed8.
What makes this a serious problem is that while South Africa has the highest exposure to this rate of change, it has one of the lowest capacities among the more developed economies in Africa to meet this change (see Figure 7).