UNEMPLOYED people with prior work experience are almost 50% more likely to find a job than those without, and experience is particularly important for young people, according to a new working paper from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).The research, which also looks at how cutting unemployment could reduce inequality, puts numbers to disturbing trends that economists have long observed in SA. Young people who have never worked become increasingly unlikely ever to get jobs, entrenching youth unemployment, which is much higher than SA’s overall unemployment rate of 26%.In its annual Article IV report on SA last week, the IMF pointed to the way in which "large businesses and labour unions maintain a stranglehold on insider-outsider dynamics", keeping wages high and hindering small and medium enterprises and employment. And it calls for an urgent focus on jobs, given the effect the country’s high unemployment rates have on poverty and inequality.SA’s inequality ratio is one of the ...
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