The Struggle for Jobs: Evidence from the South African Young Persons Survey

Entitled The South African Young Persons Survey (SAYPS), and conducted between July and November 2006, this ground-breaking study traced the histories of more than 1 000 young people – almost all of them African – between the ages of 20 and 35 from their 15th birthdays onwards, thus enabling their education and career paths to be recorded more accurately and over longer periods than in other surveys. As a result, the survey provides policy-makers and others with important new data on unemployment among young people, and how to set about reducing it.