The limits to job creation in the formal economy are well documented. This is why policies to boost job creation need to ensure that public employment programmes, self-employment initiatives, and formal sector job creation reinforce each other.

In a recent article for Econ3x3, Prof Justin Visagie asked what is to be done if the mainstream, formal economy cannot create enough jobs in South Africa. This question is brought into sharp focus by the Q2 2026 Quarterly Labour Force Survey in which unemployment amongst 15-34 year olds rose from 45.8% to 47.4%, with 264 000 fewer jobs in a single quarter.

One way forward, proposed by the Human Sciences Research Council in a study entitled, A Political Economy Analysis of Youth (Un)employment in South Africa, is that limited formal-sector job creation necessitates a three-pronged approach, simultaneously pursuing self-employment, public employment, and job creation in the mainstream economy. Crucially, the detail of each prong matters enormously and the three need to pull in the same direction, reinforcing one another through a coordinated strategy. In terms of self-employment, young people do not need generic entrepreneurship courses and advice to “register your business to become investment-ready”, which has been the dominant approach to ‘supporting’ township businesses. Instead, small enterprises need access to resources, such as reliable internet, printing and safe meeting spaces. One potential intervention is to create makers’-hubs: communal workspaces where people can share equipment and services.

This article focuses on the kind of public employment programmes needed for this three-pronged strategy. South Africa has delivered a range of public employment programmes since the end of apartheid, and it is clear that they have not been “created equal.” The oldest and largest, the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), mainstreamed public employment across the state in 2004, with former president Jacob Zuma announcing in the 2009 State of the Nation Address a target of 500 000 additional work opportunities by December 2009.

In 2024/25 the EPWP created 923 822 work opportunities, 92% of the annual target, and 392 374 full-time equivalents, 95% of that target. In 2024 cabinet was informed that the programme had created 14-million work opportunities over 20 years. It said that 4 609 000 work opportunities were created in Phase IV, covering 2019/20 to 2022/23, achieving 92% of its target.

Cabinet reported that over R52-billion was dispersed to participants as wages for Phase IV.

While these numbers might sound impressive, the term “work opportunities” is vague and the programme has struggled to provide transferable skills that can help participants transition into the labour market. Besides these problems, in practice the programme counted existing jobs rather than creating new ones, with no additional budget allocated to these endeavours; it also became a mechanism for the public sector to pay below minimum wages to, for example, cleaners and cooks for school feeding schemes, degrading their work and effectively becoming a proxy for a cash transfer.

While the EPWP struggled with genuine and good quality job creation, the Community Work Programme (CWP), launched in 2007, suffered from implementation challenges. The CWP provided participants with up to two days of work per week, capped at 100 days per year, to carry out “useful work” as defined by local residents and sanctioned by local government. The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs said in May 2026 that the programme supported more than 186 000 participants at that time.

Implementation challenges were due to the relationship between large Non-Profit Organisations, which served as implementing agents, and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), which held overall responsibility for the programme. Irregular expenditure and problematic audit findings led to the contracts of these organisations not being renewed in March 2023.

These events formed the backdrop to public sector employment being reorganised during Covid-19. The catastrophic health and economic toll also created space for rethinking this kind of work. The Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) solicited proposals from within government to create work for the common good, convened by the Presidency, though implementation remained the responsibility of individual departments and could not replicate existing core work. In its first phase, 84% of beneficiaries were youth under 35, and two-thirds were women. The PES has funded 2.5-million jobs and livelihood opportunities across various entities in the state since 2020.

The PES’s flagship programme, the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI), placed young people in over 20 000 schools nationwide, giving youth work experience while supporting schools stretched by academic and social challenges. Schools’ existing infrastructure, present in every community, supported the scaling of public employment for young South Africans. The BEEI created new positions rather than simply counting existing ones, using infrastructure and skilled personnel (teachers) to provide structured work experience, with the added benefit of addressing educational and employment challenges together. It is disappointing that the programme lapsed in 2026.

In the second phase of the President’s Employment Stimulus, the Social Employment Fund (SEF) was introduced, supporting organisations outside the state to provide work for the common good, channelling opportunities- predominantly to youth- through NGOs, NPOs, cooperatives, and social enterprises in communities.

South Africa has a vibrant civil society that has historically championed social justice issues. As one of 35 experts on youth unemployment interviewed for our recent study on the topic put it:

We have enormous resources in civil society… There are CBOs and NGOs in every community in the country. We can support the work that they’re already doing, amplify it…

Participating organisations are required to spend 80% of funds received on labour and create at least 1 000 jobs, with recipients working part-time (two days a week) at minimum wage.

Drawing on the same philosophy as the CWP, but with a different implementation model, the SEF places civil society organisations - one of South Africa’s greatest resources - at the centre of the programme. Its government–civil society partnership has been described as a whole-of-society approach for the common good. Rather than treating implementing partners as area-based organisations expected to deliver a standard set of services, the SEF lets civil society organisations administer whatever services they specialise in, under the broad mandate of “work for the common good.” This has included place-making initiatives to improve and secure public space, rolling out free Wi-Fi, and providing informal settlements with GPS addresses.

Central to the SEF’s ethos is the idea that work has social and not just economic value. As one participant told the coordinator:

without work, no one listens to me in the family. I’m not included in family discussions or decisions, because I’m no one. I don’t work, I don’t contribute.

The social value of work emerges through the status it endows youth with in their families and communities, supporting the transition to adulthood. It also manifests through extending participants’ networks. As one Gauteng youth said in a focus group: “I think for the next 10 years I’m good in terms of the networks that I’ve created in the past eight months.” Participants from marginalised neighbourhoods said employment was often secured “through connection…if you don’t have connection, then you will spend seven years not getting a job although you have the right qualifications.”

The SEF therefore helped some youth overcome the lack of social capital tied to the legacy of apartheid geography, exposing them to, as one participant put it, “big rooms, big people, big projects.” Networks mattered beyond wage work too, as one participant explained: “I’ve made connections (to support) the things that I’m planning business wise, because I have my own things on the side.”

The SEF understands that many youth generate livelihoods through multiple income streams, providing them with an income to overcome the most deleterious effects of poverty, while allowing them time and in some cases skills, to develop forms of self-employment, which are supported with the networks developed in the programme.

Our research on public employment programmes shows they are not generic, and that programme design and implementation matter. A three-pronged approach to youth employment can be effective in South Africa, drawing on resources from the whole of society, but the devil is in the detail: the shape and form of each prong matters immensely.

Written by Adam Cooper, Human Sciences Research Council. This article was published on Econ3x3