This report seeks to do three things. In the first section, we try to provide a clear
account of the scale of the crisis of youth unemployment, making the point that the
sheer number of unemployed young people means that South Africa needs to think
hard about the extent to which the approach to addressing this issue has any chance
of success. The second section reviews the principal approaches that are commonly
discussed for resolving youth unemployment and seeks to show that there is little
likelihood that these approaches will have much more than a marginal impact on the
numbers of young unemployed. The final section makes the case that only systemic
reforms that increase the rate of job creation and reduce the rate of job destruction
significantly will lead to rapid reductions in youth unemployment. This will generate
faster growth and push South Africa onto a more labour-intensive development
trajectory.
