Johannesburg - New matric graduates looking for employment face a daunting task as the South African job market remains under pressure.

South Africa's official unemployment rate is 24.5%, according to Statistics SA, while almost a million workers lost their jobs in the year to end-September 2009.

"Even though there is talk about the end of the recession being in sight, learners need to realise that they have to upgrade their skills base for the South African job market," said recruitment group Kelly's executive Denise Thomas.

Besides recession-induced retrenchments, "everyone is acutely aware of the gap that exists between current education and training provisions and the needs of the labour market", Thomas pointed out.

Matric results released on Thursday show a 1.8 percentage point decline in the National Senior Certificate exam pass rate to 60.7% for 2009 matriculants.

The National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa has also acknowledged poor results in so-called gateway subjects, like mathematics and English.

Thomas advised graduates to make use of any opportunity to better their skills, especially computer literacy, communication and general administration skills.

Thomas also said most companies do not have sufficient resources for hand-holding. "It is essential to gain some experience," she said. "Even limited experience sends a message to prospective employers that you have a mature, can-do attitude."

University graduates stand better chance

CEO of web portal jobs.co.za Gillian Meier said this year should be less bleak than 2009 for university graduates seeking employment.

"There's hope for [university] graduates mainly because of graduate programmes, but it's a different story for school leavers because they don't really have the skills that graduates have," she said.

"In 2009 companies were only replacing critical positions, but that's changing; there's been a lot of activity since the last quarter of 2009."

According to the most recent Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, 12% of employers expect to increase their worker headcount, 11% forecast a decrease, 73% predicted no change and 4% remained undecided.

Jobs.co.za's 10 most advertised job categories for the third quarter of 2009 were:

1. Information technology;
2. Auditing, accounting, banking and financial services;
3. Engineering;
4. Hospitality;
5. Education and training;
6. Government and the public sector;
7. The health, medical and pharmaceutical industry;
8. Human resources;
9. Mining; and
10. Retail and wholesale.

- Fin24.com