Job and the Jobless

Job put God on trial.  Youth are starting to do the same…

A book called The Book of Jobs - by Joseph E Stiglitz puts the banking system on trial.  Here are some teasers…

“It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling—the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997…

“At the beginning of the Depression, more than a fifth of all Americans worked on farms. Between 1929 and 1932, these people saw their incomes cut by somewhere between one-third and two-thirds, compounding problems that farmers had faced for years. Agriculture had been a victim of its own success. In 1900, it took a large portion of the U.S. population to produce enough food for the country as a whole. Then came a revolution in agriculture that would gain pace throughout the century—better seeds, better fertilizer, better farming practices, along with widespread mechanization. Today, 2 percent of Americans produce more food than we can consume…

“Small and medium-size companies, especially new ones, are disproportionately the source of job creation in any economy, and they have been especially hard-hit. What’s needed is to get banks out of the dangerous business of speculating and back into the boring business of lending. But we have not fixed the financial system. Rather, we have poured money into the banks, without restrictions, without conditions, and without a vision of the kind of banking system we want and need. We have, in a phrase, confused ends with means. A banking system is supposed to serve society, not the other way around.

“That we should tolerate such a confusion of ends and means says something deeply disturbing about where our economy and our society have been heading. Americans in general are coming to understand what has happened. Protesters around the country, galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, already know.”

Depressing Statistics

In a report titled Compensation from before World War I through the Great Depression, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it states: “From an estimated annual rate of 3.3 percent during 1923-29, the unemployment rate rose to a peak of about 25 percent in 1933. The economy reached its trough in 1933; but although unemployment had reached its peak, economic recovery was slow, hesitant, and far from complete.”  

In 1930 the unemployment rate was 8.9 percent, or equal to today.  By 1931 it was nearly 16 percent.  Then, after peaking at nearly 25 percent in 1933, the unemployment rate slowly abated…yet it was still nearly 15 percent in 1940.

By comparison, there are 3 million fewer jobs right now than there were the year the ANC took office.  Half a million of these were lost last year.  The national unemployment rate of 25% in South Africa in 2012 is superseded by Mpumalanga province’s rate of 45%.  Overall, 74% of the ranks of unemployed are youth – 2.4 million in all.  This is 51% of youth between 18 and 35 years of age.  A school leaver only has a 1 in 10 chance of finding work in the first 12 months after finishing high school.  And what is most sinister of all is, the longer they remain unemployed, the harder it becomes to employ them – ever. 

I was interested to note this in The Book of Jobs: “By 1931 unemployment was already around 16 percent, and it reached 23 percent in 1932. Shantytown “Hoovervilles” were springing up everywhere.  This is because a township is springing up like mushrooms right across the highway from C4L.  It is called “Msholozi” – the favorite name for Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa.

The 2012 Budget

In Canada the tradition is that the Finance Minister wears new shoes to present the Budget speech.  This year Mr Pravin must have come to Parliament in South Africa barefoot!  Because the national budget this week went over R1 trillion for the first time.  Mainly because of some Hoover-esque infrastructure projects that have been mandated.

Mpumalanga is one of only two provinces that does not have a University.  Both have been awarded one.  That will create a lot of jobs.  And just today it was announced that construction will begin on ours later this year – in White River!  Can you believe it?

Pravin also allocated R3.5 billion for public works projects.  There is a cascading approach, that can involve NGOs as “provincial implementing agencies” with 5 – 10 sites each.  C4L is already exploring how to get involved in this “cash-for-work” strategy.  This is not employment.  People only work 2 days a week, so as not to interrupt any ways in which they are already economically active.  Some call South Africa’s crisis “under-employment” rather than unemployment.  This approach will bestow some dignity on welfare recipients.

Skills development and entrepreneurship are surely the solution.  However, “cash-for-work” is starting to make sense in the light of Mpumalanga realities.  I would like to see Youth adapting the Occupy Movement to this context.  Each one should just target a work place and rock up every morning with a broom!  Wearing a T-short that says: I have a right to work.  If employers don’t let them in the gate, then start sweeping outside and picking up litter.  God forbid that the chamber of commerce should put up a sign that say “Jobless men keep going (we can’t take care of our own)”.  For God’s sake, let more youth in at entry level!