Episode 31 - CAN WE REVERSE OUR DISGRACEFUL UNEMPLOYMENT STATS ?

Duma Gqubule (well-known policy expert who focuses a lot of his research on economic development) joined me on In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser to make sense of the horror of 44,4% South Africans being unemployed. There can be little doubt that the implications for our democracy are dire if we do not get the 11,9 million adults who are capable of working but not working, into jobs, soonest. How did we get here? Were there periods of relative success after 1994 when jobs were created at a decent pace and sustainably so? What was done right during those periods? And when the joblessness numbers started to spiral, what was happening within the economy and political arena that may help explain it all? And, where to from here? Can we reserve our shameful unemployment stats?Duma helped me to navigate these, and related, questions. In a sense - in a very real sense - these economic questions are almost more important than (and certainly enmeshed with) the wholly and narrowly political questions we have mostly focused on on this podcast series so far.This podcast episode is therefore an important pivot from 'pure' politics to focusing on economics. And Duma is great at both offering diagnosis of what has gone wrong and why, and also good at offering ideas on how to fix the problems. Have a close listen, and then debate and engage his reasoning.