Youth unemployment: A time bomb

by Letters Editor · August 13, 2015

From Fr Bonaventure Hinwood OFM, Pretoria

I had just been reading the Sunday gospel about Jesus having compassion on the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd (Mk 6:30-34), when on the radio there was a report about 36% of our young working-age adults � as against 16% 20 years ago � being without jobs. I wondered how Jesus would want you and me to handle this.

Catholics leave offerings as they pick up holy cards feature St Cajetan at the church that bears his name in Madrid. St Cajetan is the patron saint of jobseekers. (CNS photo/Susana Vera, Reuters)

My first thought was that we should pray for shepherds who would go among them, and bring them a message of hope and encouragement centred on Jesus. These need not be priests or ministers, but preferably love-filled and believing people from their own communities.

We know that this unemployment crisis is partly owing to the lack of foreign investment due to constant labour unrest, partly because, as a recent issue of The Southern Cross told us, of the excessive and increasing gap between what the executives pay themselves compared to the workers� wages.

How do our own salary increases compare with those of our domestic workers?

But the remedy goes further down the line. Some years ago one of the popes told Catholics to invest in labour-intensive rather than high-interest return undertakings. This would help create jobs, even though it may mean lowering one�s standard of living. Pope Francis in his latest encyclical, Laudato Si�, has called on all of us to examine our standard of living in the light of growing poverty.

Apart from any Christian sympathy for this huge number of hopeless young people, it means that we are sitting on a time bomb which is going to explode one of these days, as it is already showing signs of doing in the crime rate.

Let us at least pray for shepherds to go among the jobless young people of our country.