The employment environment for youth in rural South Africa: A mixed-methods study

ABSTRACT

South Africa has high youth unemployment. This article examines the predictors of youth employment in rural Agincourt, Mpumalanga Province. A survey of 187 out-of-school 18 to 24 year olds found that only 12% of women and 38% of men were currently employed. Men with skills/training were significantly more likely to report employment, mostly physical labour (adjusted odds ratio: 4.5; confidence interval: 1.3, 15.3). In-depth interviews with 14 of the youth revealed that women are perceived more suitable for formal employment, which is scarce, informing why women were more likely to pursue further education and yet less likely to be employed. Ten key informants from local organisations highlighted numerous local youth employment resources while, in contrast, all youth in the sample said no resources were available, highlighting a need for the organisations to extend their services into rural areas. Because these services are focused on entrepreneurship, programmes to increase financial literacy and formal employment opportunities are also needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• employment
• rural

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all participants for contributing to this study. They also wish to acknowledge Rhian Twine, Floidy Wafanawaka, Amanda Selin, and the staff and fieldworkers of the Medical Research Council/Wits University Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa for facilitating data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a pilot grant from the Carolina Population Center (http://www.cpc.unc.edu). This research also received support from the Population Research Training grant [T32 HD007168] and the Population Research Infrastructure Program [R24 HD050924] awarded to the Carolina Population Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (to AW, MR). Additionally, this research received support from a Predoctoral Ruth L Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse [F31 DA036961] (to AW). The Agincourt HDSS is supported by the UK Wellcome Trust [Grants 058893/Z/99/A, 069683/Z/02/Z, 085477/Z/08/Z] and the University of the Witwatersrand and Medical Research Council, South Africa. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.