South Africa has the deepest and most persistent unemployment crisis in the world. Despite this, government continues to avoid the essential reforms that would change the country’s trajectory. Instead, it continues to rely on piecemeal public employment initiatives such as the Presidential Employment Stimulus or the Expanded Public Works Programme that will never shift the needle on unemployment.

The time has come to start talking about what a labour absorbing economy looks like, and what it would take to get us there. This includes making difficult decisions about the rigidities that hobble the labour market, the failure of skills development programmes, and the many barriers in the way of small and informal businesses.

This is the central message of a new report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), South Africa’s Unemployment Catastrophe: A call for urgent action.

“More than 12-million South Africans want work but cannot find a job. For 17 years, 1 000 people have joined the unemployment queue every day,” said Ann Bernstein, executive director of CDE.

Over nearly two decades, South Africa’s labour force grew by 42 per cent, while total employment increased by barely 15 per cent. The result: millions more work-seekers chasing far too few opportunities.

CDE’s report highlights a range of major failures that have stifled growth, and, therefore, job-creation: the collapse of state-owned companies such as Eskom and Transnet; a deepening fiscal crisis; high levels of corruption; municipal collapse; and badly conceived and implemented economic transformation and industrial policies.

Report by the CDE