Unemployment, skills shortages and wages
Unemployment in South Africa has reached approximately 23.9 percent. There is absolutely no doubt that there is a critical skills shortage in our job market for specialist skills but could there be more to the the problem of talent for employers?
While we do not wish to extrapolate to South Africa from one of the worlds biggest economies, the UK, unemployment in Britain has reached 2.65m. Employers in Britain, however, regularly bemoan the lack of skilled applicants. A report recently released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) shows that employers are not offering sufficiently attractive financial offers to candidates and that is why they cannot attract or retain the staff they need.
The article below was originally published in the Telegraph:
Do skills shortages really exist when so many people are out of work?
Employers admit they are offering too little pay to attract the best workers for jobs - a key reason why they struggle to recruit staff aside from so-called 'skills shortages'. Skills shortages often take the blame when employers say they cannot recruit the right staff for available jobs. Businesses claim the education system is failing to produce “work-ready” candidates, while specialist, senior roles can go unfilled for months because of the so-called dearth of expertise.