The Department of Labour has released its job opportunities and employment report for the 2017/2018 financial year.
The report is based on a combination of online and newspaper advertisements, with data disaggregated by occupation, industry and province.
It captured 48,309 job vacancy during 2017/18 financial year, with the number of job vacancies advertised constantly declining from the first to the fourth quarter of the 2017/18 financial year.
Sales and marketing managers were the occupations with the highest demand across the country, followed by the software developers, shop sales assistants and retail and wholesale trade managers.
“While managerial and professional occupations continued to attract more people with degree and diploma, those with less than matric educational achievements could found themselves suitable for elementary and services and sales workers’ occupations in the same period,” the report found.
“Those with grade 12 educational achievements were also relevant across all occupations but they were predominantly attractive for technical occupation.
“Furthermore, the vocational training and certification was also relevant for professional, technical and skilled agricultural occupations.
“Overall, 39% of the total jobs advertised as captured in the Department of Labour database were attractive to those with degree or diploma educational achievements, followed with those with grade 12 at 25% in the financial year 2017/18.”
This means that less than 36% of the total job vacancies advertised in 2017/2018 required people with qualifications below grade 12 certificates – or were not specified.
Jobs by field
The Trade and Community fields were the only two industries advertised job vacancies attracted all educational categories in 2017/18.
On the other hand, job vacancies advertised in finance industry required more people who have passed a degree or a diploma, grade 12, post graduate and the vocational studies.
“It is also interesting to see that vocational training and certification, e.g., artisanal skills were in high demand for a person to be employed in the mining and manufacturing industries over the same period,” the report found.
Overall, 38.6% of the total job vacancies advertised in 2017/18 required people with degree or diploma educational achievements.
This implies that there is a shift to a more educated labour force leading to an increasing share of high-skilled jobs in the economy, it states.
“The impact in the labour market is that those with less than grade 12 educational achievements will probably remain unemployed in the long-run as it was also noted that the Fourth Industrial Revoultion will also bring its own labour market challenges.”
This article was sourced from BusinessTech; for the original article, click here.
