More young women are stepping up to seize employment opportunities, with more than 70% of jobs accessed through SA Youth now taken by young women.
Deputy minister in the Presidency Nonceba Mhlauli revealed this while releasing the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention (PYEI) 2025/26 third-quarter results in Cape Town on Wednesday.
“Over 70% of opportunities accessed through SA Youth are taken up by young women, demonstrating our continued commitment to closing equity gaps in the labour market,” she said.
South Africa remains a youthful nation. According to Stats SA’s recent mid-year population estimates, about 21-million young people account for 33.1% of the country’s population.
Mhlauli said by the end of the third quarter more than 5.77-million young people had registered on SA Youth, while more than 4.8-million were registered on the Employment Services of South Africa (Essa) platform.
“The PYEI has facilitated access to over 2.36-million earning opportunities, with an additional 402,515 opportunities through Essa since inception,” said Mhlauli. “This is an increase of more than 294,000 new opportunities in just one quarter.
“These are not just statistics. Behind every number is a young person whose dignity is restored, whose confidence is strengthened and whose future is expanding,” she said.
Between October and December 2025, 294,530 earning opportunities were secured through the National Pathway Management Network.
More than 11,000 young people gained workplace experience opportunities through partnerships with the private sector and higher education institutions, while more than 6,700 enterprise opportunities were provided to support youth entrepreneurship.
Mhlauli said the revitalised national youth service also continues to grow, with 132,784 young people placed in paid service opportunities to date.
“These achievements show that the PYEI is not only growing in scale but also in depth, diversity and sustainability of opportunities,” she said.
She said that through the jobs boost outcomes fund, 9,170 young people had enrolled, more than 7,200 had been placed into jobs, and more than R220m was disbursed, based on verified employment outcomes.
Mhlauli acknowledged the scale of the challenge.
She said too many young South Africans suffered unemployment, exclusion and limited pathways into meaningful economic participation.
According to Stats SA, the unemployment rate fell to 31.9% in the third quarter of 2025, down by 1.3 percentage points from the previous quarter.
Despite this improvement, youth unemployment remains stubbornly high.
“Youth unemployment is not only an economic challenge — it is a social challenge, a developmental challenge and, fundamentally, a matter of justice,” Mhlauli said.
She stressed that the government’s role goes beyond engagement.
“Government has a responsibility not only to listen, but to act decisively to expand opportunity, restore hope and ensure that no young person is left behind,” she said.
“It is within this context that the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention was established, not as a temporary response but as a structural national effort to unlock earning opportunities at scale, remove barriers to entry and support young people as they transition from learning to earning,” she said.
Mhlauli echoed remarks made by Deputy President Paul Mashatile at a Presidential Youth Engagement roundtable in Cape Town.
“As [Mashatile] said yesterday in Khayelitsha, young people are the beating pulse of our nation, not only our future but our present. They shape the national mood, surface new ideas and drive the conversations that define our country,” she said.
Mashatile expressed optimism that youth-focused government programmes could significantly increase employment in the next three years.
“Unemployment is quite high in the country, but even higher among young people. That’s really our biggest concern. So, the president has agreed that these programmes I am talking about are not going to be once-off. They will be funded and we are hoping that in the next three years we will probably double, if not triple, the number of young people being helped by presidential interventions,” said Mashatile.
Mhlauli said the government would continue to support the youth.
“While youth unemployment remains one of the greatest challenges, the government insists that through partnership, innovation and persistence, pathways to earning are steadily expanding for millions of young South Africans,” she said.
TimesLIVE
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