WITH almost half of South Africa’s young people unemployed, there has been a call for urgent and far-reaching action to tackle what has been described as a “worsening national crisis”.
This follows the release of Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2026, which showed that the youth unemployment rate rose from 45.9% to 47.4%.
The number of unemployed young people, aged between 15 and 34, increased by 264,000 to 5 million compared with the first quarter, while youth employment declined by 40,000 to 5.6 million.
In addition, the country’s overall unemployment rate also increased, from 32.7% to 33.6% in the second quarter. The number of unemployed people rose by 345,000 to 8.5 million, while employment declined by 16,000 to 16.7 million.
- Aqeel Madhi, chairperson of the Active Citizens Movement Youth Subcommittee, said the continued rise in unemployment showed that existing interventions were failing.
