Skills development is more than a numbers game

THE Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) from Stats SA shows that South Africa's unemployment rate increased by 1.7% from Q1 of 2025 rising to 33.2% in Q2.

- JESSICA HAWKEY

This might not seem like a very big jump, but when you consider that this amounts to 140 000 people, the impact of even a slight rise in unemployment really hits home.

And the youth unemployment numbers, the picture is even bleaker, with close to half of the young people in South Africa (4.9 million) without work. While there's no doubt that this is a crisis and action needs to be taken, really addressing this situation is about more than just skills development.

If we're trying to alleviate unemployment by giving people skills to do seasonal work, we're not going to make a real change. If we want to bring down unemployment but we're training people to do jobs that are hard to come by, we're missing the point. And if we're not thinking long-term in the efforts we're making to tackle unemployment, we're only doing half the work.