The South African youth unemployment rate is extremely high, at well over 50% of youth using
the narrow definition of unemployment. This high unemployment rate has been a chronic
problem and has been at these or similar levels since the democratic transition in 1994.
Unemployment rates were probably also very high for a substantial period before 1994, but
the lack of suitable data from that period makes precise measurement of the unemployment
rates for that era quite impossible. We make use of the first three waves of the nationally
representative longitudinal dataset obtained from the National Income Dynamics Study, to
explore the factors that assist school leavers in finding employment. By means of descriptive
statistics and regression analyses, we estimate the differences in job finding rates by gender,
geographical location, educational attainment, household structure and migration status. Our
results are not particularly surprising. Male youth, better educated youth, and youth who
migrate from rural areas to urban areas tend to have better job prospects on leaving school.