Abstracts

51 term remain complicated challenges. Unlike other upper-middle-income countries that focus on solving high-skills deficit problems, South Africa has the additional medium-skills deficit problem together with a surplus of low- skilled workers that ranks among the largest in the world. Focusing solely on one problem will put South Africa in a tough spot, either worsening the disparity or leaving the country altogether behind. South Africa’s Capacity to Adapt In order to address those labor challenges, there are multiple areas that the government can target. Formal education, vocational training, public employment and deployment programs, and job placement programs— supply-side initiatives—all share the goal of alleviating the unemployment problem while equipping South Africans with the skills necessary to respond to changes in nature of work. For each core component of the supply- side initiatives, the government is already passing skill-strengthening initiatives; for example, job placement programs are seeking to address college graduate unemployment problems. Regarding vocational training, Jin in this volume assesses challenges within the current system. Therefore, this article focuses on the remaining two capacities: public employment and deployment programs and formal education, specifically STEM education. Expanded Public Works Programme One of the government’s main objectives for the postapartheid era was to provide immediate economic relief and address unemployment issues. The original plan was to provide jobs within the public sector in order to transition low-skilled workers and the unemployed back into the workforce. As discussed, the CSPS sector accounted for the majority of employment growth from 2001 to 2012, with more than a million jobs created during this period; this sector comprises mainly public entities, like state-owned train, power, and chemical companies. This increase has been a direct impact of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP). The Department of Public Works (2009) introduced the EPWP in 2003 as a part of the National Development Plan 2030, a tool to transition its citizens back to the workforce. EPWP has multiple phases, with each phase lasting about five years and consisting of two main components: public employment and skills training. In 2014, the governing body outlined its goal for the third phase: to employ a total of six million workers and reduce the unemployment rate significantly by 2019 (Mabuza, 2014). The plan partially played out as the CSPS remained the main driver for employment opportunities; nevertheless, the unemployment rate remained at an all- time high. EPWP, in theory, is a substantial plan to reduce the poverty level in South Africa. In the short term, it did what the government expected—increased employment opportunities (five million work opportunities in the first 10 years) and absorbed a half million unemployed workers annually (Karuri-Sebina et al., 2019). However, this number is minimal when compared to the unemployment total— seven million (DSSA, 2020). To fully reduce unemployment, the government would have to increase expenditures manyfold. The current 2019 budget for EPWP is R2.3B ($157M) per year, only 0.1% of the national budget (Karuri-Sebina et al., 2019). The government acknowledged that EPWP was seen as a short- term measure to alleviate poverty and that a long-term solution is necessary to complement the program. One innovative aspect of the program is the training provided to the participants. The program is well designed, providing opportunities for the unemployed to make a living and gain transferable skills, allowing them to transition back to the workforce. With respect to the infrastructure segment, a contractor learnership program is provided, enabling labor-intensive workers to attain certificates at NQF levels 2 and 4. After attaining the supervisor certificate at NQF level 4, workers are one step closer to becoming eligible for government contracts, not only creating more opportunity to escape poverty but also helping alleviate South Africa’s medium-skills shortage problem. The nonstate sector launched its own NQF level 4 program,