Human Resource Planning and Development

UNEMPLOYMENT SITUATION IN LESOTHO

1. INTRODUCTION

Unemployment is not only a personal frustrating and demoralizing episode for an individual, but it is a calamity for the family as well. For the policy maker and administrator, this group of people has potential, political, social and economical ramifications and therefore calls for remedial actions to alleviate the situation (BOS: 1986 Population Census). Unemployment is internationally based on three criteria which have to be met simultaneously. The “unemployed” comprise of all persons above a specified age for measuring the economically active population who during the reference period were: “without work” that is, they were not in paid employment or self-employed; “currently available for work” that is, they were available for paid employment or self employment during a specified period and “seeking work” meaning those who had taken specific steps in a specified recent period to seek paid employment or self employment (K59: Statistics for Social Policy).

Unemployment as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively looked for work in the past four weeks. The unemployment rate is a measure of the prevalence of unemployment and it is calculated as a percentage by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by all individuals currently in the labour force.

There are three main causes of unemployment: Structural causes (changes in the market conditions often turn many skills obsolete) Frictional causes (Transaction cost of trying to find a new job) and Cyclical unemployment (Economic contraction). There are arguments that a large share of current (youth) unemployment is structural in a sense that most of the unemployed people have skills which are not compatible with the jobs becoming available. It is further argued that many of the unemployed especially youth either possess inadequate skills or possess skills that have greatly...