By Ariane De Lannoy, Deputy Director, SALDRU and Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town
South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis is a stubbornly intractable problem, with millions of young people remaining excluded from earning opportunities, often for extended periods of time. Hidden behind the quarterly releases of the national labour market data, however, are the lived realities, ambitions and agency of the young people who continue to try to find connection to a system that is unable to absorb them.
Promises and disillusionment
When Thandiswa’s story was documented in After Freedom: The Rise of the Post-Apartheid Generation in Democratic South Africa, she represented a generation of young South Africans who had grown up with the promise of democracy and greater equality, but who continued to encounter deep barriers in building independent, stable lives.
Thandiswa was not without ambition. Like many young people, she wanted to work, become financially independent, and create a better future for herself and her children. She had aspirations, resilience and a willingness to pursue opportunities wherever they appeared. But the pathway from aspiration to stability proved extraordinarily difficult.
She moved between short-term opportunities, searched for work through whatever networks were available to her, and tried to navigate a labour market that offered few clear or reliable entry points. Over time, the uncertainty became deeply discouraging. The repeated experience of trying to move forward but being unable to establish a secure livelihood severely affected her sense of hope and wellbeing. Her situation reflected what many young people continue to experience today: a prolonged period of precarity in which it becomes difficult to plan for a future.
Navigating the complex transition into adulthood
It is crucial to note that Thandiswa’s experience is not a story about a lack of effort or motivation. Her story reflects what happens when young people are expected to navigate complex transitions into adulthood without sufficient support, in an economy that is not creating enough opportunities. Her experience remains relevant today.
And yet, government, philanthropy, business and civil society have invested significant resources into creating opportunities for young people. Large-scale public employment programmes exist, as do learnerships, internships and training opportunities. These initiatives matter, because they provide income, experience, hope and, for some, important stepping stones into longer-term livelihoods.
But the success of these initiatives remains small relative to the scale of the challenge: South Africa continues to face one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. Over 9 million young people between the ages of 15 and 34 are neither in employment, education nor training (NEET), while many others move between temporary work, unemployment, discouragement and short-term training opportunities, unable to escape fragile livelihoods.
South Africa houses a generation whose transition into adulthood is characterised by precarity. This challenge is driven by the interaction between an unequal education and training system, limited economic opportunity, social inequality and fragmented support systems.
Youth unemployment is a structural challenge Navigating the complex transition into adulthood
Recent analysis released by Econ3x3 highlights that South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis is rooted in decades of low economic growth, structural inequality and an economy that has not generated enough opportunities for new labour market entrants. Without stronger economic growth, investment and demand for labour, even the strongest youth employment programmes will struggle to create sustainable pathways.
This is a critical point: South Africa needs an economy that grows, creates jobs, enables entrepreneurship, reduces barriers for small businesses, and expands opportunities for young people to participate meaningfully. But growth alone will be insufficient to resolve the challenge, because even when opportunities exist, many young people face significant and interrelated barriers in accessing them.
Education matters – but it is not enough
Education remains one of the most important foundations for economic mobility. Research consistently shows that completing matric and obtaining post-school qualifications are associated with improved labour market outcomes. Education expands opportunities and remains one of the most important investments South Africa can make in its youth cohort. However, too many young people still leave school without the foundational capabilities needed to participate fully in a changing economy. Educational opportunities remain deeply unequal, and young people’s trajectories continue to be shaped by household circumstances, geography and school quality.
At the same time, qualifications no longer guarantee employment. Many graduates struggle to find work, and many young people who complete training programmes find that they lack the networks, experience or connections needed to enter the labour market. The challenge is therefore not only one of preparing young people for opportunities, but also of ensuring that opportunities exist and that young people can successfully navigate pathways towards them.
Moving from programmes to pathways
International and national evidence shows that young people experience unemployment and exclusion through multiple, overlapping barriers: some lack qualifications, others lack information about opportunities; some cannot afford transport costs associated with job search or training, while others lack networks that connect them to employment. Some experience mental health challenges, household pressures or a loss of hope after prolonged periods outside education and employment. Many face several of these barriers simultaneously.
Disadvantages accumulate and interact, trapping young people in a state of uncertainty and disconnection. Recent work demonstrates that vulnerability is multidimensional, shaped by intersecting factors including household poverty, labour market readiness, wellbeing and social networks. Among NEET youth, vulnerability is particularly high. Analysis of data collected through the first wave of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) found that nearly nine out of ten young people who were NEET experienced multidimensional vulnerability, and that vulnerability predicted NEET status ten years later.
This is a significant finding, because it changes how we think about solutions. A young person experiencing lower levels of vulnerability may only need visibility of opportunity. Someone who has completed school but lacks connections into the labour market may need job matching and support to navigate opportunities. But a young person experiencing multiple vulnerabilities, such as financial need, emotional distress and/or significant caregiving responsibilities, may need more intensive, coordinated support that helps them access and combine the services and opportunities required to move their lives forward.
In other words, young people need well-coordinated, efficient and diversified pathway support alongside the individual, short-term programmes: support that helps them understand their circumstances, access appropriate services and remain connected to opportunities over time.
Building a more integrated and efficient system
South Africa has large numbers of organisations, programmes and institutions working to support young people. The challenge is that these initiatives often remain fragmented, leaving young people to navigate a complicated landscape of education, training, employment services and social support on their own.
This is where building integrated social protection systems becomes increasingly important. Social protection is often understood primarily as providing income support. But internationally, there is growing recognition that effective social protection systems must also help people build capabilities, strengthen agency, manage transitions and access opportunities. This reflects a developmental approach to social protection: not only protecting people from hardship but helping them overcome the barriers that prevent them from participating fully in society and the economy.
Applied to young people, this means recognising that successful transitions into adulthood require more than a qualification or a short-term job opportunity. They also require information, networks, confidence, support and the ability to navigate complex systems. Recognising the need for integrated and comprehensive social protection systems also implies that efficiency becomes essential. In a context of limited resources and enormous need, the question cannot only be: “How do we provide more services or opportunities?” It must also be: “How do we ensure the right support reaches the right young people at the right time, in order to connect them to opportunities that match their skills and needs?”.
Generating a better understanding of young people’s circumstances would allow services to be targeted more effectively. It would reduce duplication, improve coordination and increase the likelihood that interventions strengthen longer-term livelihood pathways rather than short-term connections that are followed by disconnection.
Efficiency is therefore about investing better, based on stronger evidence.
From reducing unemployment to enabling economic mobility
Perhaps the most important shift needed is one that moves beyond measuring success only through numbers of participants, placements or completed programmes. These measures matter, but they do not tell us whether young people are able to build more secure futures. The bigger question is whether young people are experiencing social and economic mobility: are they gaining the capabilities, resources, networks and opportunities needed to move out of precarity?
Employment is one pathway to mobility, entrepreneurship is another, and education and training can create new possibilities. However, mobility depends on whether young people can access and sustain these pathways over time.
This shift would create an important opportunity for philanthropy. Funders can play a role in strengthening the systems that enable young people to thrive. This includes supporting policy advocacy, strengthening youth voices, investing in the research needed to design evidence-based approaches, generating longer-term support for trusted community-based services, and backing initiatives that improve coordination between education, training, employment and social support providers.
The goal should be to build an integrated, high-quality ecosystem where young people are not left to navigate pathways to adulthood on their own, but where they can understand their options, develop their capabilities, access support and connect to pathways that allow them to build stable, independent lives.
________________________________________________________________________________
Further Reading
From Profiling to Prediction: A Multidimensional Vulnerability Index for NEET Triage in South Africa