Youth unemployment rate in South Africa in 2020

In most years of the past three decades, over half of all eligible workers aged 15 to 24 in South Africa were unemployed. Youth unemployment peaked in the early 2000s, at over 60 percent, and it reached similar levels again in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite being one of the most stable and advanced economies on the African continent, unemployment has been a persistent problem, and in recent years South Africa often ranks as the country with the highest overall unemployment in the world, and has the second highest youth unemployment rate (behind Djibouti).