is even further negatively affected. Most young people surveyed by Youth Capital found looking for jobs expensive and had to source the money to look for work from multiple sources. Sources included family members , friends , savings or earnings from previous work , government grants , money lenders and other sources or some combination of these.
Despite this dire situation, according to report launch panellist and financial journalist Duma Gqubule, the unemployment crisis, and the youth unemployment crisis in particular, is“The most important thing you have to understand is the scale of the crisis. It is a humungous crisis” and it requires that government “do more than focusing on growing the economy,” says Gqubule.
Their survey revealed that four in 10 youth usually looked for work for more than a year before finding a job, with a further two in 10 looking for between six months and one year. Just a third said they looked for work for less than six months. This creates a cycle of unemployment because, according to Duncan, “CV gaps can be seen as red flags by employers. It’s a chicken and egg situation and so the sooner we get young people into jobs, the better.
But the responsibility is not the sole ambit of the state. The private sector, particularly internet service providers can step in too. Six in 10 respondents surveyed said they’d used a zero-rated or data-free platform to apply for a job and three-quarters of these said that it made applying for a job easier. Two in 10 respondents had also used WhatsApp to apply for work.