The unemployment rate in South Africa is scary. Those who cannot find a job or don’t know much about self employment often even leave South Africa, and sometimes their parents or children and friends and family follow.

Some people are unable to leave South Africa, though, or don’t want to.

It stands to reason that if you cannot find a job in South Africa, start working for yourself instead, by becoming self-employed, but what about those young people in South Africa who do not want to work for themselves?

How could becoming self-employed help reduce the general unemployment rate in South Africa?

If there were more young people in South Africa becoming self-employed, how could this make more jobs available to those young people who simply just want a job?

My personal thoughts:

When the young people of South Africa matriculate or get their degree or diploma after further studies, they try to get a job. Besides many of them failing to find a job in South Africa, my guess is that they are also not really analysing what “working for a boss” means, or even more so, what a “boss” is.

A “boss” is usually the owner of a business. A “boss” is often self-employed. Just because a business is large does not mean that the owner or boss is not self-employed.

Now, if there are not enough businesses in South Africa needing more employees, the youth of South Africa need to create more businesses, by becoming self-employed.

If South African matriculants or young people who have just completed a degree or have gotten their diploma start their own businesses now and put in a lot of hard work, within a few years their businesses are likely to have grown to the extent that they need to employ extra staff to assist them with their business.

Two problems solved: Those who can’t find work, work for themselves; Those who want to work for a boss and would normally struggle to find a business that would employ them now have more businesses to approach.

However, one is going to solve any big unemployment problems without other problems being addressed first:

Without the youth of South Africa knowing much about self-employment, or knowing that some types of businesses can start off with little or even no start up fees, not much is going to be resolved. Just about anybody can make a living for themselves, working for themselves (and later this can be expanded into a larger business), but not if they don’t know how to do it.

Starting to think about becoming self-employed only after matric or after college or after university or after getting incredibly depressed that a job can’t be found, is often a little late, and being depressed may delay the progress of a plan to help reduce the youth unemployment rate in South Africa.

I wish that South African schools offered more to students, and regularly, on the topic of entrepreneurship, and much more than ideas or guidelines, but actual step by step procedures – in fact, related to getting a job too, and not just related to becoming self-employed or starting one’s own business.

How do I know that youngsters, including matriculants and those with degrees, finish school or further studies and cannot find a job, and don’t know what to do?

Hearing people talking about it;
In the news;
And because of the search phrases used on a search engine like Google and finding this site:

In the last 3 days alone, people found this site after using phrases on search engines like:
– what work can I do after matric
– Jobs after matric
– what should be done after matriculation?
– life after matric
– looking for a job after matric
– best courses after matric
– application letter for next year after matric
– how to find a job after your matric

Matriculants and others are struggling to find work and many of them don’t even know what to do. If they become self-employed, they’ll have work, and as their little business grows, they may need to employ others to help them with their business.

View a list of 10 Self Employment Ideas for Matriculants

Can Self Employment Help Reduce the Unemployment Rate in South Africa?
Maybe. There’s a better chance of self-employment helping to reduce the unemployment rate in South Africa if youngsters know or learn or are taught more about being self employed.

© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2014