SA’s youth unemployment crisis deepens despite marginal uptick in Q4

Statistician General Risenga Maluleke has noted that youth unemployment remains a rising challenge.

He said any suggestion that South Africa isn’t facing a serious unemployment crisis, is a misrepresentation of the reality of widespread joblessness in the country.

Maluleke's remarks follow recent comments by the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Minister, Gwede Mantashe.

Last month he said, “some sit in the sun and expect the State to deliver,” before later clarifying that his comments had been misunderstood.

On Tuesday, Maluleke released the latest fourth-quarter 2025 labour force numbers, which show a steady decline in the official unemployment rate down to 31.4% from 31.9%.

ALSO READ: SA’s official unemployment rate drops to 31.4%

However, despite this modest recovery, young people remain particularly vulnerable in the labour market.

"When I hear people out there saying we don’t have a challenge of unemployment, and to water down such developments makes us fail to appreciate the challenge of unemployment in our country," he said.

While figures from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) show an improvement in the country’s unemployment rate, joblessness remains a deepening crisis.

This, as labour figures shrank in the fourth quarter, meaning more people are out of work.

Out of 7.8 million unemployed people, at least 5.8 million of them are young people.

This comes after a loss of 113,000 jobs by young people in the three months to December.

The chairperson and CEO of non-profit organisation, Africa Tikkun, said equipping young people with skills to run their own businesses is critical to addressing the country’s unemployment challenge.

“You have to teach individuals how to market their skills, their business enterprises, we have to teach them how to set up payment gateways and teach them how to manage cash flow that’s project related rather than providing a monthly salary or wage.”