Unpacking South Africa's 2024 Critical Skills Survey: Key Insights and Workforce Trends | Marisa Jacobs

The Xpatweb 2023/2024 Critical Skills Survey Report provides essential insights into South Africa's most in-demand professions, capturing feedback from top employers to guide HR strategies and policy decisions. 
 
Marisa Jacobs, Managing Director of Xpatweb, takes us through this comprehensive survey, revealing the skills most needed in today’s competitive market, offering a vital resource for businesses planning their future workforce needs.
 
Download the full report for a deeper understanding here - https://www.xpatweb.com/xpatweb-annua...

#criticalskillsvisa #xpatweb #immigration #dha #businessnews #surveyresults #2024

Chapters

• 0:10 Critical Skills Survey Results Analysis
• 9:22 2024 Critical Skills Survey Analysis

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

My name is Marissa Jacobs. I'm Managing Director of ExpertWeb, the premium immigration provider in South Africa. Today we're going to be chatting a bit about the Critical Skills Survey and the latest results from 2024. The survey has been running for many years, since 2016, that ExpertWeb's been running this survey and it is a survey amongst business in South Africa to determine what are the skills that business finds most difficult to recruit in South Africa and for which they often have to extend their search beyond the borders of South Africa to be able to attain those skills.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Now, if we look at the survey, in 2023, the Department of Higher Education and Training collaborated with the Department of Home Affairs to publish a new critical skills list. The previous list dated back to 2014 and really was very outdated and due for an update. So higher education and training, a lot of that research work and we were proud to be in collaboration with them and a lot of the data that we see in the final critical skills list as it stands today is derived from the expert web annual critical skills survey and it was used to validate that list in terms of including certain occupations that would not have been included if we did not have that input from business. So really an important survey for business to take part in and really positive to see the government departments taking the input and incorporating that into legislation Good. So if we then go forward and we have a look, so the purpose and the definition of the survey, it is determined what is those critical skill shortages and then what is the role of foreign nationals in addressing those critical skill shortages in South Africa. So if we go straight into the highlight of the critical skill survey, that is, to determine what are the top 10 most critical skills in South Africa at the moment, and if we look at the 2024 survey results, we can see at number one is engineers. It's no surprise. Engineers has been at the top of the list for the past couple of years. So you'll see, 23 percent of survey respondents said that they really struggled to find engineers. Number two we see ICT specialists. Number three, artisans. Then we see foreign language speakers. This is specifically in the call centre area. We've seen a big growth in the call centre industry in South Africa and as such, those skills for foreign language skills keeps on growing. C-suite executives very important. Those are your CEOs, coos, cmos, cios, as we see more and more multinationals establishing themselves in South Africa as well, as we see South African organizations expanding into Africa and internationally, that need for C-suite execs with international experience is increasing. Then we also see science professionals. Media and marketing professionals has been a highlight on the critical skills survey for many years, but only in this latest critical skills lesson, 2023, that we see the department including media and marketing specialists. And, of course, we anticipate, as we see AI, ict and technology industries growing, that this will become a skill that is even more and more demanding future and new occupations and new skills around the sector will develop over the years, and new skills around the sector will develop over the years. Then STEM teachers we've seen it was excluded from the previous list, the quota list and the critical skills list, and it's now been re-included, very importantly. And then, lastly, senior financial executives, which we've separated from C-suite executives because we see such a specific demand for executives in the financial space and we've seen that again in terms of several senior financial occupations included on that new critical skills list. Good, so that is a look at your top 10.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Then what we look at next is just a Quick overview of some of those big stats from the survey. So 96% of participants indicated that they feel that work authorization should be extended also to the spouses of critical skills holders. This is something that we're seeing internationally. The Permits Foundation does a lot of work around this, lobbying for access to work for spouses. In South Africa that does not exist. So if you're a spouse of a foreign national you have to apply for work visa in your own right. But we're seeing a lot of countries around the world, most recently Ireland, that has given that open access for spouses of critical skill visa holders to work and we're seeing the data, certainly from business would support government extending that work or direct work authorization for spouses as well. I think worth adding there is we have seen the implementation of the remote work visa recently and that is certainly an area where we expect business to take advantage for spouses where we see professional spouses. When their spouse gets sent on assignment to South Africa, they might continue their career with the foreign company and the remote work visa will, of course, allow them to legally continue to work for foreign employer while in South Africa and if they meet those specific conditions, good.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Then we look at 82% of participants perceive the work visa process to be an inhibitor to recruit internationally. So 82% is still a very high number. We have seen a lot of work by the Department of Home Affairs to ease that for employers, for example the rolling out of the Trusted Employer Scheme. I'm really expecting that when we open the survey up again for the next round that we'll see a significant improvement in that, as we've seen the backlog improve under the leadership of the newly appointed minister, as well as that implementation of the Trusted Employer Scheme. So we're really hoping to see that number improve.

Speaker 1: 7:11

And then, lastly, 79% of organisations find it difficult to recruit critically skilled individuals Good. So next we delve slightly deeper into each of those individual occupations on the top 10 list to see what are the specialised areas. So if we first look at engineering, we'll see 14% chemical engineering. We'll see mechanical engineering, mining, industrial, nuclear. This is very important data for the Department of Higher Education and Training as well. And as they plot the OFO codes on that critical skills list to understand exactly what type of engineers we are looking at. In the ICT sector, the examples of occupations is data analysts, data scientists, it engineer, it program managers, software developers, etc.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Then artisans we're not surprised to see millwright, electricians, fitters and turners. And again, this is not a problem unique to South Africa. We see many international destinations when they put together their critical skills list, artisan skills in extremely high demand and extremely highly paid extremely high demand and extremely highly paid which also means that they attract our South African skilled artisans, which ever increases the shortage that we have in South Africa because our South African artisans go and work abroad. Foreign language speakers we've spoken about that, the data center industry and the specific languages being German, flemish, swedish, danish, dutch, italian and Greek. On C-suite executives, you will see we've got CEO, cfo, cto, coo. Then, if we look at media and marketing specialists, we'll see that there's brand category marketing managers, creative designers, sales and marketing professionals, direct sale professionals, copywriting, so quite a wide variety of marketing skills that are in high demand.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Healthcare professionals this was, of course, not originally included on the new 2023 list and then later in October an updated list was published that set out all the medical fields to be included and from the survey we can see medical doctor, registered nurse, retail pharmacist, industrial pharmacist, emergency care professionals and laboratory technologists are some of those top skills according to the survey.

Speaker 1: 9:57

We've included a few comparisons so that you can see over the last five years, how those numbers have moved. In terms of eight of the most popular occupations, you'll see, engineering has remained top of the chart over four of the five years, and definitely some interesting data to look there. Ict has always been high, you'll see. As I mentioned, media and marketing specialists have always been high, even though they are quite a new addition to the formal critical skills list. So that is an overview of the 2024 Critical Skills Survey data. I hope that you find this interesting and that there is some value in terms of taking this back to your business. There will be a link below where you are able to download the formal report with all the different data and some supporting information, which also gives an overview of the immigration landscape as it stands at the moment, and we look forward to you participating in our survey when it opens up again later this year.