Young South Africans Spend More than 20 hours Looking for Work

 

Many young South Africans spend more than 20 hours looking for work in a week. That is about three hours a day, including weekends.

A recent survey by Open Dialogue SA showed that 27.5% of young people spend more than 20 hours looking for work, followed closely by 26.7% of respondents who said they spend 4 to 8 hours per week looking for work, 17.9% of respondents said they spent 8-12 hours, 15.3% said they spent 2-4 hours and 12.6% of respondents said they spent 12-20 hours looking for work. In the past three months, 73% of those surveyed have looked for work, 18% said they were employed but looking for work, 6% said they were looking for “some form of employment” and only 4% said they were not looking for work for work.

When asked how the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown affected the ability to work, 57% agreed that it has become more expensive to look for a job, 18.4% of respondents said they lost their employment, 13.1% said they were forced to move and 11.5% had reduced income. According to Stats SA, the official unemployment rate was 46.3% among young people aged 15 to 34. This means that nearly one in two young people in the labor force did not have a job in the first quarter of 2021.

Done by Lucille Dyosi