Unemployment is generally the term that springs to mind when one thinks of the South African labour market, but these four are equally apt: shortage, confusion, mismatch and surplus.
Shortage:
There is on average a shortfall of one in three senior managers in the public sector. In extreme cases, this rises to 54%, such as in the defence department.
Confusion:
The government admits it does not know how many vacancies there are in the public sector, nor does it know what its skill requirements at different levels are.
Mismatch:
Employment equity requirements are extremely difficult to meet in some categories, for example, black women accountants.
Surplus:
While there is evidence of a growing skills shortage, particularly in the public sector, it is being accompanied by a boom in matric-level and graduate unemployment.
Recently President Thabo Mbeki announced the appointment of a task force to push South Africa’s growth to 6%. He said he is considering importing skills, renewing focus on the labour market as a key constraint to achieving higher growth.
However, it appears that the government has an inadequate grasp of exactly what skills it requires and where. This skills knowledge-gap extends to all three tiers of government.
The skills challenge is not as acute in the private sector, with leading companies saying they do their own training and/or import skills as required.
But as the economy kicks to higher growth levels, one report calculates, about 65 000 skilled workers will be needed in the next five years.
The engine-room of the South African government, the Department of Public Service and Administration, has no database of the state’s skills needs, despite 30% of senior civil-service posts standing vacant.
This week JCP International, a consultancy specialising in organisational performance, released research entitled Employment Trends in South Africa, which shows that far from a shortage of skilled managers, graduate unemployment is booming.
According to the report, matric-level unemployment rates have risen from 25% to 40% since 1995 and tertiary-level unemployment rates from 6% to 15%.
A second study, The Post-Apartheid South African Labour Market, by the Development Policy Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, published in April, shows that the unemployment rate of “degreed African and white workers” has increased from 18 000 in 1995 to more than 44 000 today.
“Despite a skills shortage in South Africa, there are increasing numbers of highly educated people without employment,” says the report. “This represents one of the most important challenges facing government: ensuring that the education system produces the mix of skills required by the labour market.”
In February the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, announced an “urgent revival of the human resource strategy” to “ensure integrated human resource development planning and implementation” both in the government and nationally.
Nearly six months later, this strategy is still nascent, said Feroz Patel, Deputy Director General for planning and monitoring in the education department. He said that within the next two weeks the departments of trade and industry, education and labour will meet to “identify the tasks” for the strategy, including matching the “supply side” and the “demand side” of the country’s skills needs.
Pandor also announced in February that further education and training colleges (FETs) and sector education and training authorities (Setas) would be reformed so that they could better match employers’ needs.
According to the JCP International report, only 33% of FET graduates are finding jobs because their level of qualification is the equivalent to that “undertaken by learners to improve their employability, but without improving their overall skills level”.
In addition, Paul Lundall, an independent consultant and member of National Skills Authority board, said that the Setas are failing to “disaggregate” government information accurately to “plan and align” for the country’s skills needs.
A sample of annual reports from various national government departments show that on average the vacancy rate among senior managers in the public service is 30%. At the “skilled level”, including technicians and crafts people, the vacancy rate ranges from 60% in the Department of Foreign Affairs to 8% in the Department of Health.
Professor Richard Levin, the Director General in the Department of Public Service and Administration, said the vacancy rate in provincial housing departments is about 32%.
However, he said these departmental figures are “inaccurate” because the government’s payroll system (Persal), which the auditor general relies on for his annual reports, is riddled with “inaccurate and outdated information”.
This makes it exceptionally difficult to deal with “human resources capacity problems”, including quantifying skills needs, across the public service.