43% of South African youths are not in employment, education or training

I’ve never lived in South Africa, but I have two South African parents and have visited the country several times, and can confirm that the parent comment is exactly correct. SA can come as a shock if you’re not expecting it: even just driving from Cape Town airport to the central city, the view abruptly switches from tin shacks as far as the eye can see, to houses (which in comparison are mansions) surrounded by barbed wire and electric fences. And it’s the same no matter where you travel. And this is in one of the more affluent and safe cities in SA — ‘safe’ as in, you’re not actually risking your life if you walk on the street in one of the more touristy areas. Definitely an amazing country to visit, but the inequality is utterly extreme.

EDIT: Here’s an example of what I mean. [0] is a Google Street View of a bridge near Cape Town International Airport. On the one side: tin shacks. On the other side: a golf course, behind middle-class (I think) housing.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.9675053,18.5735234,3a,60y,2...

Thank you for your candor! The socio-economic inequality in South Africa is staggering and its a powder-keg that's just waiting to be set off. Additionally, there is a wide chasm between black and white youth unemployment - I believe only 6% of white youths are unemployed.

I think blaming Zuma alone for mismanagement is not entirely accurate: none of the successive governments prioritised eliminating inequality - not the Apartheid government (obviously), but also not Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma or Ramaphosa. The economy is reliant on the exploitation of cheap labour, but this will have to change if the political will is there. BEE (affirmative action) had the right idea, but the execution was not great as it was riddled with corruption. It did help with the creation of a growing black middle class, but the floor wasn't raised.

There is a lot of corruption, but much could have been done to improve the education in under-resourced areas - a lot of rural and township schools do not provide high school science subjects because they do not have labs or lab equipment, not to mention teachers.

The spectre of Bantu Education will haunt non-metropolitan schools for a long time to come. "Bantu Education" was a lower-quality education black people had to endure under Apartheid - just enough to prepare one for non-skilled factory or mine work. A large number of present-day black teachers studied under Bantu Education, or if they are young, were taught by teachers who qualified under bantu education. It's a mess.

> The infrastructure and processes that are taken for granted in developed countries are only really available to a minority in SA.

A very small minority. The middle classes don't have access to reliable power, water, government bureaucracy (mail, taxes, passports), law enforcement, etc. South Africa is failing all its people.

In the West, our experience is the West. So we often make the mistake of assuming similar systems, even similar beliefs, when we speak about other areas of the world. Forums like this are useful precisely because there is an ability to have knowledgeable people chime in to help us set a more realistic context for discussion.

>schools with 0% high school graduation rates.

If I were a parent I'd be passing out pirated text books at that point.

Germany has some of the best youth employment numbers (see chart at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27393190) and yet birth rates are similarly low.

This is not a valid comparison. "Youth Unemployment" is calculated differently than "Youth not in employment, education or training". The equivalent statistic for Spain per the OECD is ~17% now, not 38%.

It sucks but it seems to be where we are anyway headed in a few decades, you simply do not need so many workers, at least not in how the job market is shaped now.

As an Spaniard, I can say we have a lot of problems:

- Low industry and industrial market focused to make profit saving in wages, not selling an interesting product or an advanced one, and usually risking the minimum possible. A lot of big companies of different sectors are here because you can pay nearly minimum wage to a trained employee without problem. Most of the people would accept because at least they can have a work.

- Low technology industry, based on giant companies who make cheap and big software, with nearly zero R&D, and wanting the cheapest people possible (they don't want nor need talent or good people). Most of the talented Spaniards that work abroad and get experience and knowledge have trouble getting back to Spain because they are overqualified for most of the jobs.

The past two problems make a physicist, a chemist, or a biologist (for example) hard to find a work in their field, and when they find earn less than working in a fast food restaurant. And that's why there are a lot of then working in sectors who doesn't need a degree (or even high school), or emigrate. That last thing make really difficult to find trained professional here when they are needed.

- An investor market who would only invest in things that could give a lot of money in a really short time period (pubs, home renting, real estate, small companies that are currently in the market and profitable). They won't give an euro to any startup that haven't sold successfully a product already.

- A population that doesn't want to be a freelance worker or making a small company outside some professional groups that have been in that way for decades, like some construction workers, carpenters, smiths, or plumbers, people who have a small shop, etc.

- To worsen the previous problem, is expensive to be a freelance worker or to make a small company. You have to pay taxes even when your professional expenses and profits are zero. The first year isn't too bad (because you only have to pay a small quantity in comparison to the next years, but anyway most people decide to work illegally the firsts months or years to at least have some amount of money when the need to make it legally and start to pay.

- Working on your own not only needs more money, also more time. Depending on where on Spain are you living, the local or regional government will help you less or more, and the procedure will need more or less time, reaching about 10 to 12 months in the worst cases to being able to pay your own taxes to work on your own.

- Corruption in all layers of the society. What politicians care about is how can get more votes, and if they offer something positive for the country in a long term, that won't affect people in actuality, they are gone to lose. Is a vicious circle difficult to find an exit.

- People without education and current difficulties to access it. Some people without education from a few years ago have trouble entering to "Professional training", what could be called "technical school" in the USA, because sometimes there isn't any vacancy to attend it (in public and even in private centres) due to so many people trying to improve their lives in that way.

- An inflated unemployment rate because are people who are working illegally, and this isn't uncommon because they earn their salary and also can access to the unemployment benefit. It's totally illegal, employer and employees could be easily in jail for this, and employees would have to return all the money received, but there isn't any watching this. Other times is accepted in that way because there is the only way to find a job.

With that panorama, how can somebody could have happily a child here?

There are going to be other Spaniard that had some better experiences and actually are happy with what he/she have (this is possible in some parts of the north of the country or in bigger cities like Madrid), and I'm happy that not everybody experience this kind of problems, but that is what I have seen and what I have heard from other people in my circles and the Internet.

Excellent comfort zones.

Total social atomization.

You can't have children through Discord. And why would you? With whom?

> You find similarly grim numbers in Western Europe too. I mean youth unemployment was over 50% in Spain during the post-Great Recession crisis and is at 38% now.[1]

No, you don't measure the same thing. Those unemployment rates are calculated not on the whole set of youths, but on the relatively small subset which is not in various types of schools, i.e. it is the ratio of the youths which don't work over the youths which are or could be looking for a job.

The South-African figure is against the whole set. If you were to apply the same method for the Spanish and other European countries, the resulting figure would be much smaller than your 38%.

> far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman

The magically fixed 2.1 figure has been there for decades, but it doesn't factor in many factors, the most obvious one being the changing survival rate (from birth to making the next generation).

> get youth to first complete high school [...] But is it?

Yes, but it will never happen. I've seen this playbook in 3 countries now (one of which South Africa): attack education so that people aren't educated enough to understand why they need to vote you out.

If you speak to the people who keep voting for the regime, it's "I hate the ANC, but we must vote for them." In terms of destroying education to stay in power, that's a slam dunk.

Education is the Achilles Heel of democracy.

We had roughly the same youth unemployment in Spain at the peak of the 2008 crisis. The problem was not education.

People don't find jobs because of their corrupted government destroying the economy, not because they don't know calculus.

There is a shortage of skilled workers and there is a surplus of unskilled workers. Google “skill shortage South Africa” or something like that for more info. I don’t think there is an easy solution to bringing that gap, but I’m sure getting the basics right (ie a decent education system) would help a lot.

If you were starting a business, like a software company or even, I don't know, a bakery, would you start it in South Africa?

No.

Some countries have a shortage of people. They're hiring, but they can't find people.

However, South Africa has a shortage of businesses. That shortage makes people useless: they're not hired, nobody needs them.

Solution: create policies that favor businesses. Employment goes up, quality of life goes up.

These situations can become traps for local economies: People don’t want to invest in education without job opportunities. Companies don’t want to invest in more jobs without educated applicants. Self-reinforcing cycle.

The inverse of this situation is why high cost of living cities continue to thrive: It may cost more to hire and retain people, but you’re guaranteed a supply of motivated and educated applicants. It becomes worth the premium to operate in those expensive markets.

I can’t speak to SA, but there are definitely cities and even regions in the United States that have high unemployment but also struggle to hire reliable employees regardless of wages offered. Even if a company pays well, the well-paid and well-educated hires often want to use those jobs as a springboard to move out of the city rather than risk tying their career to a declining local economy. Turnover is high simply because educated and motivated people leave the area.

This chart also gives a great insight into (I'm hesitating on the word) "traditional" gender roles among young people by country. Great comment!

Sounds familiar. When I was building my house (not in SA) the construction workers would often disappear after getting paid. I would go looking for them in the village and find them on a bender. They would come back when they needed more booze money. It was pretty obvious why they did not have many opportunities to get ahead, and never would.

Do you know how much where they being paid? In my experience, this only happens when the wages are very low. I don't know the direction of causality: do higher wages motivate workers not to be more professional, or do low wages result in the 'good' workers avoiding those jobs? Even in the US, a lot of minimum-wage McJobs have relatively high levels of absenteeism

It reminds me of a small coworking space I used in Sao Paulo, with three receptionists, a few "managers", lots of cleaning staff, someone doing just coffee, security, etc. They could do all of that with two employees total. In front of the building, there was a petrol station with one employee per pump. The pandemic was actually a relief for lots of companies that were able to fire expendable staff more easily.

Yeah, in South Africa nobody puts their own gas in their car. There are multiple people at each filling station whose job that is. You also don’t pack your groceries at a supermarket either. You also have a maid and a gardener, it’s so dirt cheap unless you’re really poor there is no reason why you wouldn’t. There are car guards all over, there’s no need to even push your own trolley or pack the stuff in your car, they’ll do it for a small tip. Basically if you earn an average amount money you can enjoy a seriously comfortable life.

The surplus of unskilled workers means that labor is very cheap. Businesses over employ (cleaning staff, security etc), and even homes over employ in terms of domestic staff (maids and garderners), but there’s still a big surplus.

that's because labor is a lot cheaper than in those countries, where there's a lot more jobs that require education

Labour is really cheap in South Africa. It's probably cheaper to employ someone to perform a task than it is to automate it, as is would be in Europe which has higher labour costs

Same as in Greece there are (traditionally, I don't know currently) 3 people handling every bus. One driver and two to take payments etc.

This was posted here on HN a few days ago about the situation in Brazil: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/the-brazilianizat...

Statisticians have about a dozen different definitions of unemployment, depending on how they count retired people, full time parents, people caring for relatives, people on long-term disability, people with part-time jobs, people doing voluntary work, people like actors who are between jobs, people who've given up on searching for work, and so on.

The 'NEET' definition does not consider full-time mothers as employed.

In addition to the other answers here, there is a large informal economy that essentially caters for the poor. This both provides them with informal means of income but also allows the poor to access essentials cheaply. For example a typical middle class corporate worker may earn a salary and live a lifestyle that is comparable to European counterpart. This same person may employ a full time housekeeper for $350 a month and this housekeeper somehow gets by because she exists in a parallel economy of sorts.

People are employed, just not formally, and they're paid in cash.

https://theconversation.com/informal-economies-are-diverse-s...

It's the same situation in many developing countries.

I can't speak to SA, but worked in Namibia which is adjacent and culturally quite similar. The various tribes own most of the land which is parceled up into farms which is then worked by massive extended families. Life outside of the cities out in the village is actually pretty good. There's basically 0 hunger since its all farms and lots of opportunities for people to run small one-off businesses to make side money. And since families are so extended, there's always a farm you can go work at. If you manage to avoid AIDS and alcolholism the life expectancy is easily 80+. Downside of course is that there's very little opportunity to move out, but the government is pushing rural education programs hard so I'm not sure how else they could deal with that.

Point being, rural unemployment really isn't that big a problem, its the urban unemployment that is brutal.

Odd jobs, unofficial employment, family, welfare. South Africa is also well known for high crime levels.

Surviving in different places in the world requires different amount of work.

If you live in Brazil or Cuba cold weather does not exist and you can wear a t-shirt swinsuit all year long and survive.

If you live in Germany,Japan, Norway or Boston you can't do that. You need to prepare for Winter, and not just you, but your house needs to be prepared, your means of transport needs to be prepared, and so on.

While Winter exist in SA, it is pretty mild for European, Asian or American standards.

Also in lots of places you could have a farm and you don't need to buy lot's of things if you just live a simple life.

And Africa is gigantic, with lots of resources for a population much smaller than Asia or Europe, and way younger.

USA has similar unemployment stats with subsets of their population demographics. This subset largely survives and thrives due to section 8 and EBT/SNAP entitlements.

Partially through the informal economy described elsewhere, and a fairly robust welfare system that provides grants and other social support to about 18 million people.

Hidden non-criminal economy, community and/or family support, for some even criminal activities I presume

Their parents feed, house and clothe them.

Edit: not sure why this is being buried. I'm not judging, it's just the answer to the question isn't it?