South Africa’s latest unemployment figures are a stark reminder that the country cannot afford an education and skills system that is a fraction of a second behind modern labour and economic demands.
The official unemployment rate increased from 32.7% in the first quarter to 33.6% in the second quarter, while the number of unemployed people increased by 345,000 to 8.5 million. That’s according to Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS).
The situation is even more concerning among young people. Youth unemployment increased by 1.5 percentage points to 47.4%, with the number of unemployed young people rising by 264,000 to five million. Only 5.6 million young people were employed, a decrease of 40,000 from the previous quarter.
More than a statistic
These figures should not simply be read as statistics, because behind every percentage point is a young person struggling to enter the labour market, a graduate searching for an opportunity, a household losing income or an aspiring entrepreneur trying to create an economic future in an environment where opportunities remain scarce.
The figures therefore demand that we ask a fundamental question: Are we preparing people for the jobs that existed yesterday, or are we equipping them for the economy that exists today and will emerge tomorrow?
This is precisely where the transition from legacy qualifications to occupational qualifications becomes important. South Africa’s decision to transition from pre-2009 to occupational qualifications should be understood within the broader context of a rapidly changing economy and labour market.
For far too long, the national conversation about education and employment has sometimes been reduced to the number of people obtaining qualifications.
Occupational qualifications
But a qualification, on its own, cannot be the end of the journey. The real measure of a successful skills system must increasingly be whether people can use what they have learnt to secure employment, perform effectively in the workplace, adapt to changing economic conditions or create opportunities for themselves and others.
Occupational qualifications are fundamentally designed around this principle. They seek to connect learning more directly to occupations, workplaces and the competencies required to perform jobs.
This creates an opportunity to move from an education system that is primarily concerned with what people know to one that also places significant emphasis on what people can do with what they know.
That distinction matters enormously in an economy where technology, industries, occupations and business models are changing at an unprecedented pace. The jobs that will be in demand five or 10 years from now may look very different from those that dominate the labour market today.
Changing nature of work
Artificial intelligence, automation, digitalisation, the green economy, advanced manufacturing, new construction technologies, renewable energy, logistics, healthcare innovation and the digital services economy are already changing the nature of work.
South Africa therefore needs a qualifications system capable of responding to these changes. The QLFS figures show that employment changes are not occurring uniformly across the economy. In the second quarter of 2026, employment increased in Trade by 70,000, Construction by 39,000 and Finance by 11,000. At the same time, employment declined in community and social services, mining, agriculture and manufacturing.
These shifts illustrate why qualifications cannot remain static. An economy is constantly creating, transforming and sometimes eliminating occupations. As sectors contract, new opportunities emerge elsewhere. As businesses adopt new technologies, existing occupations change. New occupations are created while others require workers to acquire additional competencies to remain relevant.
A modern qualifications system must therefore be sufficiently responsive to these dynamics.
This is one of the strongest arguments for occupational qualifications. They create a closer relationship between qualifications, occupational requirements and the skills demanded by the economy.
Relevant skills
The objective is not simply to produce more qualified people. It is to produce people with relevant, demonstrable and adaptable skills. The ultimate test of an occupational qualification should be whether it improves a person’s ability to participate meaningfully in the economy.
Employability is not simply about getting the first job. It is about possessing the competencies, practical experience, adaptability and confidence required to enter the workplace, remain productive and continue learning as the workplace changes.
With youth unemployment at 47.4%, the country cannot afford an approach in which young people spend years acquiring qualifications only to discover that their knowledge does not translate easily into workplace opportunities.
Young people need pathways that connect education with economic participation. Occupational qualifications can contribute to this by strengthening the relationship between learning and actual occupational practice. Where appropriately implemented, they can help learners understand not only the theory behind an occupation, but also the practical competencies and workplace behaviours required to perform it.
This can help narrow the gap between what institutions teach and what employers need.
Entrepreneurship
But there is another important dimension: entrepreneurship. Skills should not only prepare people to find jobs, but they should also enable people to create them.
South Africa’s unemployment challenge cannot be solved by employment alone.
The economy needs more businesses, more entrepreneurs and more people capable of turning skills into products and services. A plumber who can establish a plumbing business, a qualified artisan who can employ apprentices, a digital specialist who can provide services to small businesses, an agricultural worker who can establish a value-added enterprise, or a construction professional who can build a contracting company is not merely a potential employee.
Broader empowerment strategy
This is why occupational qualifications should be viewed as part of a broader economic empowerment strategy. When people acquire practical competencies that can be applied in the workplace and translated into services, products and businesses, qualifications can become instruments of economic participation rather than simply credentials for employment applications.
This does not mean every occupational qualification will automatically produce an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship requires additional support, including access to finance, markets, mentorship, business development services, technology and infrastructure.
But the foundation must be there because people need skills that can be converted into economic value.
The informal sector
The QLFS provides another important lesson. While employment in the formal sector and household sector declined during the quarter, employment in the informal sector increased by 34,000. This is significant.
South Africa’s skills strategy cannot focus exclusively on large formal employers. Millions of people participate in informal economic activity, small businesses, contracting, self-employment and community-level enterprises. Occupational skills can have particular relevance in these environments because many occupations lend themselves to independent practice and small-enterprise development.
The challenge is therefore to ensure that the transition to occupational qualifications does not simply create another qualification pathway, but forms part of a broader ecosystem that connects skills to employment, self-employment, entrepreneurship and lifelong learning.
Opportunity for a reset
The shift away from pre-2009 qualifications is therefore more than an administrative exercise involving the replacement of one set of qualifications with another.
It is an opportunity to rethink what society expects from the national qualifications system.
The transition must be carefully managed so that learners, students, workers, employers, institutions and other stakeholders understand what is changing, why it is changing and what the implications are for them.
There must also be appropriate transitional arrangements for people who are already enrolled in legacy qualifications or who hold existing qualifications. Most importantly, the transition should maintain confidence in the national qualifications system.
The objective should be neither to dismiss the value of existing qualifications nor to suggest that everything associated with the previous system was inadequate. Rather, it should recognise that the labour market has changed and that qualifications must evolve alongside it.
A qualification framework that never changes risks becoming disconnected from the economy it is supposed to serve. DM
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