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Job Opportunities and Unemployment in South Africa

The South African Department of Labor reported last month that the nation has too few jobs for unskilled laborers. The department also said there are not enough workers for highly skilled positions.

The sharp differences between jobs and skills were apparent recently when officials advertised a job opening in the government. The position was that of auditor-general or chief financial supervisor.

With a 26 percent unemployment rate nationwide, there was no shortage of interest in the job. 90 people asked to be considered. But officials said many of them lack the necessary skills of education. The auditor-general is responsible for supervising and independently examining South Africa's finances.

The advertisement said, the position required the person to be a trained accountant. It said candidates had to have at least a Master's degree and years of experience. Yet among the job hopefuls were laborers, a security guard, a secretary and some whose highest education level was high school.

The Labor Department report blamed the nation's poor education system. But for unskilled workers, the story is very different.

Restaurant industry official TJ Van der Walt says the business he works with get a huge number of applications for every job.

"We deal in an industry where there's no real skill needed, so we get literally thousands of applicants for the positions that we get."

Mr Van der Walt notes that good workers are hard to find. He says he spends a lot of time studying the job qualifications of people who don't have the require skills. In his words, people just want jobs.

Sejamothopo Motau is a member of South Africa's Parliament. He says the job market is difficult, and both skilled and unskilled workers are feeling the pain. He says education has been a major problem in South Africa's development. He notes that many Blacks received a poor education under white-minority rule. Apartheid officially ended in 1994.

He says many people are university graduates, still they can't get jobs where there is a need for skilled workers. This is because the education these graduates have is not enough to place them in jobs with high skill requirements.

"So what it tells us is -- and I think everybody in this country now accepts that -- is that there's a mismatch between our education system and the products of that system, and the needs, the economic needs, of the country."

Mr Motau's party estimates that 4 million young South Africans are unemployed.

About One-third of US Nurses Struggle to Find Work

About one-third of new nursing graduates in the United States are having trouble finding work.

Alexandra Bauernschub is finishing a Master's degree program at the University of Maryland. She has done well in the program, earnin g the highest Grade Point Average of GPA possible. But she is worried about finding a job in health care.

"I've applied for 35 different jobs and, despite having a 4.0 GPA [very high grades], I have not received any jobs, so it's really concerning."

Yet there is hope for nurses who completes studies at four-year schools or graduate level programs, they have an easier time finding a job in health care than nurses graduating from a two-year degree program.

Experts say there are fewer job openings than usual now because nurses in their 50s and 60s are delaying retirement. These workers are hoping to rebuild the savings they lost a few years ago during the financial crisis.

Jane Kirschling is head of the University of Maryland's nursing school.

"This economic downturn has created this tension, in terms of people staying in the workforce; right at the same time we have been working hard to increase the number of graduates to meet that growing health care need."

The number of students entering nursing school has risen sharply in recent years. At the same time, the United States is preparing for the retirement of millions of baby boomers, that is the name given to Americans born between the end of World War II and the early 1960s.