Exactly 50 years ago tomorrow, at around 10am, just outside Johannesburg, the police opened fire on a crowd of protesting school pupils. Hundreds were shot and 176 killed in the initial shooting. Today, thank God, South Africa is a different kind of country – in large part as a consequence of the sacrifice that those young people made that morning. But in one key respect it is not, which is that its young people remain largely excluded from the economy.

The simplest data make that plain.

Earlier this year, while South Africa’s national unemployment rate stood at 32.7%, the rate among people aged 15 to 24 was 60.9%. Among those aged 25 to 34, it was 40.6%. The global rate of unemployment, by comparison, is under 5%.

Those percentages refer to people actively looking for work who cannot find it.

Another way to think about the labour market is to measure what share of people within an age bracket are employed. Among all South Africans, that is about 4 in 10. But for young people it is 1 in 10.

Much of that has to do with education. South Africa’s economy has evolved away from primary and secondary industries into a high-tech, high-skilled, services-oriented economy – in which highly skilled graduates, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, will most easily find jobs. Yet fewer than 1 in 10 of South Africa’s pupils get a good pass for maths in matric.

Elsewhere in this newspaper this morning is an editorial making the point that both the Democratic Alliance and the African National Congress are failing the country and its people. No doubt they will both spend this week declaring their commitment to the youth of the country, how they will work to improve education, and how committed they are to raising the growth rate in the economy.

Weigh those commitments and promises against what is going on in the country’s schools and in its labour market.