JOHANNESBURG - Despite government claims that millions of work and livelihood opportunities have been created through employment programmes, youth unemployment remains stubbornly high.
According to the latest Statistics South Africa figures for the third quarter of 2025, youth unemployment stands at 44 percent, only marginally down from 46 percent a year earlier.
The slow improvement has raised questions about whether existing initiatives are operating at the scale and quality required to address one of the country’s most persistent crises.
Youth Employment Service (YES) CEO Ravi Naidoo says the problem is not a lack of effort, but a lack of coordination, long-term focus and alignment with the real needs of the economy.
"There are no quick fixes to sustainable youth employment," Naidoo said.
"To make meaningful progress, we need large-scale programmes that are closely linked to what the economy needs and maintained for at least ten years."
During last year’s State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted the Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) as a key intervention, saying it had created nearly 2.2 million work and livelihood opportunities through innovative models designed to provide high-quality work to participants.
He said young people had secured thousands of work opportunities through the National Pathway Management Network, underpinned by the SAYouth.mobi platform, with plans to expand these initiatives further.
However, YES argues that headline figures alone do not reflect the lived reality facing many young South Africans.
Naidoo said the economy is creating jobs, but not at a pace that can absorb the growing number of young people entering the labour market each year.
Roughly one million young people enter the workforce annually, with an estimated 300,000 unable to find work.
"The challenge is both the number of young people not finding employment and the quality of jobs available to those who do," he said.
"Many are finding work that is neither decently paid nor meaningful to society."
He added that the youth labour market requires a fundamental overhaul.
Naidoo says government should focus on expanding proven public-private initiatives while reducing red tape for participating companies.
He also called for the rollout of large-scale public employment programmes focused on infrastructure, including roads, water, rail and digital networks.
Ultimately, he said, youth employment will only improve if economic growth accelerates.
"Businesses hire when the economy grows," Naidoo said.
"Government must focus on fixing the fundamentals -- energy, logistics, crime and investment -- while scaling up what’s already working."
About YES:
- YES has supported 210,000 youth with full-time, minimum wage (and above) employment for 12 months.
- YES has been growing by 30 percent per year.
- YES gets NO TAXPAYER funding and is 100 perent funded on a voluntary basis by the private sector.
- YES has become the largest fully-private sector-funded youth employment programme in the world.
- The vast majority of YES youth are working in private sector companies and getting invaluable experience on how businesses operate. This is especially important as that equips many of them to go on to play important roles in building the economy.
Of the 43,000 young people who completed their YES programme in 2024-2025, about 7,100 set up a business -– this makes YES a large pipeline for young entrepreneurs. This is essentially a free by-product of YES youth getting their work experience in the private sector where they get inspiration from seeing companies in action.