South Africa’s efforts to tackle joblessness can be more effective: here’s how

Source: Lauren Graham, Ariane De Lannoy Leila Patel, The Conversation, 14 April 2021, photo credit: The Economic Times

Youth unemployment is one of South Africa’s most intractable challenges, made worse by COVID-19. Prior to the pandemic the unemployment rate (including people who had given up looking for work) was just under 70% for people aged 15 to 24.

A year later the rate had increased to 74% – despite government investments. So it is crucial to understand what interventions are working. But how do we evaluate whether youth employment programmes are successful, particularly when unemployment is caused by the structure of the economy?

The obvious answer, of course, is whether a programme results in a young person getting employed.

This is logical and easy to measure. It can easily be linked to the release of funding to programmes. And it allows for programmes to be compared. This was done in a systematic review of 113 programmes internationally.

However, as we have explored in several recent studies, there are a number of drawbacks to relying solely on job placement as an indicator of successful intervention. Doing so misses out on outcomes that are equally important, or more so, amid high structural unemployment.
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