South Africa's labour market is currently facing significant challenges due to a critical shortage of skills across various sectors. Some of the most notable of these sectors include IT and Finance. Shortages like this impact business and ultimately lead to negative effects on South Africa’s GDP.
CareerJunction’s latest Employment Insights Report showed higher demand for workers in the IT and Finance sectors. However, the scarcity of skilled professionals is not limited to South Africa alone. The phenomenon has become global. For instance, European countries like Germany are grappling with severe staff shortages, leading to various operational challenges in sectors such as transportation, healthcare, and hospitality.
Numerous factors have exacerbated the skills shortage in South Africa. The high cost of tertiary education limits access to higher education for many individuals, while low wages drive highly skilled workers to seek better opportunities abroad, resulting in a 'brain drain' phenomenon. These kinds of issues can become compounded, and this leads to issues in recruitment in these kinds of sectors.
In response to these challenges, CareerJunction highlights the sectors most affected by skills shortages. Some of the most prominent of them all, other than the aforementioned IT and finance shortages, include medical and health, marketing, design, media and arts, business and management, and engineering shortages.
Within the IT sector specifically, businesses struggle to find skilled talent in areas such as software development, technical/business architecture, database design/administration, systems analysis, data analysis/warehousing, and business analysis. This leads to further issues as these businesses are not able to thrive without the necessary staff to build these sectors of the economy.
Similarly to IT, the Finance sector faces shortages in roles such as external auditing, taxation, actuarial management/administration, cost and management accounting, and financial analysis. This scarcity limits any potential growth in the finance sector in South Africa. However, while these issues are particularly prominent in IT and finance, they are far from the only areas affected.
The scarcity extends to numerous other sectors. Some of the most severe shortages can be found in nursing and professional caregiving positions in the medical and health sectors. However, further shortages have been noted in the marketing sector as well as the design, media, and arts sectors, especially with regard to roles in web design/multimedia/3D design and graphic/print/packaging design.
Many of these positions have been identified in the 2022 Critical Skills List published by the Department of Home Affairs, which aims to attract foreign, skilled professionals to support local businesses and industries. This is something that will ultimately benefit the country, but employing locals would ultimately boost the country’s internal standing within the global market.
While there have been slight improvements in sourcing candidates for certain skills compared to the previous year, recruitment difficulty remains high for many critical roles. This is especially true for technical/business architecture, external auditing, financial analysis, product management, business analysis, web design/multimedia/3D design, and civil/structural engineering. All of these roles are specialised and require education and experience to be effectively performed.
To further complicate matters, there are regional disparities in skills throughout South Africa. Provinces like Gauteng, the Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal are experiencing higher recruitment difficulties due to their economic activity. In particular, the Western Cape faces critical shortages across various sectors, while Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal predominantly struggle with IT skills shortages.
In summary, the shortage of skilled professionals poses significant challenges to businesses across South Africa by impacting various sectors and regions. Addressing these shortages will require a concerted effort from both the public and private sectors to attract, retain, and develop local talent.
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How can we at Network Contracting Solutions assist you in overcoming your talent acquisition challenges? Reach out to us today, and let's discuss how we can support your business goals and help elevate you and your business. The national trend may skewer toward a lack of skilled workers, but we will do everything we can to ensure that you find the workers that you need.