New Report Shows Human Support Helps Unemployed Youth Move Into Work or Learning
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 11 June 2026 — As South Africa marks Youth Month, a new policy brief is challenging the way the country thinks about youth unemployment, arguing that the missing ingredient in many interventions is not another programme or platform, but human support.
The brief, From Margins to Mainstream: In-Person Support as a Policy Lever for Livelihood Outcomes, comes at a time when millions of young South Africans remain locked out of employment, education and training opportunities, despite significant public investment in youth employment initiatives and social support programmes.
Produced by the Centre for Social Development in Africa (University of Johannesburg), the Department of Social Development, FinMark Trust, the National Development Agency, South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), and the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town, the policy brief argues that unemployment cannot be solved through jobs programmes alone.
For many young people, the barriers run much deeper. Years of rejection, financial hardship, transport costs, poor mental health, food insecurity and fragmented public services often stand between young people and opportunity. The result is a generation of young South Africans who are not simply unemployed, but increasingly discouraged and disconnected.
The report highlights promising results from the Generating Better Livelihoods for Grant Recipients (GBL) programme, which works with primarily child support grant recipients, and the Basic Package of Support (BPS) programme, which works with young people aged 18 to 34 who are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET).
While the BPS programme shows how intensive coaching can quickly improve outcomes for unemployed youth, the GBL programme demonstrates how similar principles can support grant recipients over time. Both programmes involve in-person support and guidance to enable participants to move towards stable livelihood and job prospects.
Findings from the BPS programme are striking.
Within four weeks and four coaching sessions, 40% of BPS participants had moved into learning or earning opportunities, despite many entering the programme after extended periods of unemployment and discouragement. The programme also found significant improvements in well-being. Signs of anxiety among participants dropped from 37% at the start of the programme to 21% after three coaching sessions, while participants reported stronger confidence, improved self-belief and a renewed sense of agency.
The report suggests these outcomes are not accidental. Rather than leaving young people to navigate a maze of disconnected services on their own, the programme pairs them with coaches who help identify barriers, connect them to opportunities, provide referrals to support services and assist them in planning their next steps.
"The evidence is increasingly clear that access to opportunities alone is not enough. Young people need support to navigate systems, overcome barriers and remain on a pathway towards sustainable livelihoods," says South African Research Chair in Welfare and Social Development, Professor Lauren Graham.
Similar lessons emerge from the GBL programme, which has delivered the following results to date:
- Connected 185 participants to employment and learnership opportunities.
- Supported 1,333 participants through life skills, financial literacy and resilience-building programmes.
- Enabled 462 participants to access technical skills training.
- Assisted 541 participants through entrepreneurship and business development initiatives.
These results suggest that sustained, relationship-based support can help grant recipients move closer to work, skills development and greater economic resilience.
“Human support is crucial to the GBL programme. Many participants arrive facing significant barriers, and it is often the coaching and practical guidance they receive from our Linkages Facilitators that helps them take up opportunities and stay on course,” says Brendan Pearce, CEO of FinMark Trust. “As we look to scale this work, what we have learned is that lasting impact depends on both participants’ resilience and systems that can respond with timely, coordinated support.”
Taken together, the findings from both programmes challenge a long-standing policy divide between social assistance and employment interventions.
South Africa currently provides social grants to more than 25 million people, yet support systems that help grant recipients and unemployed youth transition into sustainable livelihoods remain limited and fragmented.
The report argues that greater integration among social protection, employment services, educational opportunities, and psychosocial support is urgently needed.
Importantly, it also pushes back against the assumption that digital platforms alone can solve exclusion. While technology can help connect people to services, the findings show that face-to-face coaching, mentorship and relationship-based support remain critical, particularly for young people who have experienced prolonged unemployment and social exclusion.
As Youth Month shines a spotlight on South Africa's unemployment crisis, the report offers a simple but powerful lesson: creating opportunities matters, but helping young people reach and sustain those opportunities by breaking down the many barriers they face matters just as much.
The teams behind the GBL and BPS programmes and their partners are calling for increased investment in integrated, human-centred support systems that recognise the complexity of youth unemployment and help young people move from the margins into meaningful economic participation.