Abstract
M.Com. (Development Economics)
South Africa’s youth unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world and is a concern to both economists and policy-makers. What is particularly concerning is the disparity in unemployment rates among the different population groups. Previous studies on youth unemployment have attributed the high unemployment rate in South Africa to a lack of necessary skills in the economy and the fact that a large proportion of the population gains university qualifications for career paths that have few employment opportunities. This latter fact contributes to the high unemployment rate among graduates. Thus, this dissertation endeavours to determine whether identity influences this choice. This is done by using a survey to determine the population’s cultural traits and then applying a multinomial logit model to determine whether these cultural traits influence the selection of the fields of study and, by implication, the career choice. The fields of study considered are financial sciences, humanities, law, management, and sciences. The more popular choices are then compared with the fields with the highest unemployment rates, from the second quarter of 2014, to establish whether there is a link.
The results show that some cultural traits do indeed influence career choice; but, they also reveal that career choice alone does not influence youth unemployment rates. The results further show that such fields as sciences could have more graduates; but, factors such as experience have a bigger influence on whether or not these graduates will find employment.