The Youth Employment Service (YES) has reached a new milestone in creating more than 200,000 quality work opportunities for talented young South Africans. By enabling talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter the economy, YES plays a pivotal role in advancing South Africa’s inclusive economic growth agenda. As the world’s largest fully private-sector-funded youth employment programme, YES continues to demonstrate the transformative impact of effective public-private partnerships.
Since 2021, YES has grown at an impressive annual rate of over 30% a year, with more than 1,900 leading businesses actively funding young internships. The programme has also paid out more than R12.5 billion in youth salaries, demonstrating substantial private sector investment in South Africa’s future workforce.
“YES has become a critical catalyst in growing employment and promoting sustainable transformation in South Africa,” said YES CEO Ravi Naidoo. “This milestone represents not just 200,000 jobs, but 200,000 young people who now have quality work experience that makes them seven times more likely to transition into permanent employment. Moreover, the knowledge and experience they have acquired increases South Africa’s capacity to succeed in many future-facing sectors.”
YES has positioned itself as a key driver of South Africa’s economic transformation by focusing on digital and technological skills development. Through strategic partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, which provides exam-based certifications for 50,000 young South Africans in digital transformation roles, YES is equipping young South Africans for the digital economy.
The programme has achieved remarkable reach into disadvantaged communities, with 74% of YES participants coming from social grant recipient households. This has resulted in approximately 44,000 households graduating out of poverty thresholds through youth employment. Additionally, R1.61 billion in cash has flowed into rural communities through youth salaries.
The entrepreneurship outcomes are equally impressive. An estimated 28,080 YES alumni have established their own businesses, leveraging their work experience and corporate exposure to become job creators themselves. This represents 17% of programme participants, making YES the largest pipeline of young entrepreneurs in South Africa.
YES operates across four key sectors through specialised programmes: Youth4Tourism (Y4T), Youth4Green (Y4G), Youth4Digital (Y4D) and Youth4SMMEs (Y4SMMEs). This sector-focused approach ensures that participants gain industry-specific skills while supporting the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s Sector Masterplan implementation.
The programme’s Youth Employment Impact Architecture demonstrates how YES serves as a conduit between unemployed youth and both internal corporate opportunities (currently 75% of placements), and external sector-specific roles. This dual approach maximises the programme’s reach while ensuring alignment with national economic development priorities.
YES’s success has garnered implicit trust from business, exemplified by its inclusion as a case study in the recent B20 Employment and Education Taskforce report. The report notes that “YES is increasingly becoming a key pipeline through which companies can select, develop and de-risk undiscovered talent previously locked out of the economy by their socio-economic backgrounds.”
The Presidency has confirmed that 68% of all “demand-led” youth jobs in the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention (PYEI) are YES jobs, underscoring the programme’s central role in the country’s youth employment strategy.
With strong infrastructure built over five years of continuous innovation, YES is positioned to expand its impact further. The programme maintains the lowest administration cost per job among youth employment initiatives, averaging R4,000 per year through economies of scale.
“YES represents an important endowment South Africa is making to achieve a sustainable future,” said Naidoo. “Every month, 3,000 to 4,000 additional YES alumni go on in their careers as valuable employees or entrepreneurs, helping to build the economy from the ground up.
“The key to future competitiveness in South Africa lies in mobilising the energy and ingenuity of our youth,” he continued. “When young people are given meaningful opportunities, whether in corporate placements, small enterprise support, or digital innovation hubs, the effects are exponential. Each young person employed or trained multiplies value across their community through income generation, household spending and skill diffusion.”
Naidoo concluded that South Africa’s greatest asset is not its minerals, but its people. “And the best investment the country can make is to unlock the full potential of its youth,” he said.
