Millions jobless as South Africa struggles to create work; officials eye growth push

South Africa’s unemployment rate stood at 33.6% in the second quarter, leaving 8.5 million people without work. That number is not a statistic in isolation. It represents the daily reality for millions of citizens who cannot find jobs in an economy growing at just 1.1% in 2025, a pace far too slow to absorb the roughly 300,000 new job seekers entering the labour market each year. Economists estimate the country needs sustained growth of at least 3% annually to begin closing the gap, and at 5% growth, unemployment could fall by roughly 1.9 million people over time.

Against that backdrop, President Cyril Ramaphosa this week launched Phase 3 of the Government-Business Partnership in Johannesburg, expanding a three-year-old initiative into four new sectors: mining, tourism, infrastructure, and agriculture. The expanded programme carries a concrete target, one million jobs by 2030, and signals a deliberate shift from managing foundational crises toward scaling growth across the broader economy.

The partnership brings cabinet ministers and senior officials together with corporate leaders coordinated through Business for South Africa (B4SA), under a joint strategic oversight committee that meets quarterly with the president. The first two phases produced results that ordinary South Africans felt directly. Load-shedding ended after 335 days of rolling blackouts in 2023, Eskom returned to profit for the first time in eight years, and Durban’s port earned recognition as the world’s most improved. Six consecutive quarters of growth followed, the longest such run since 2017 and 2018, and credit rating upgrades from S&P Global and Fitch Ratings, plus an improved outlook from Moody’s, have since followed.

The gains remain fragile, though. A decade of underperformance sits behind the current 1.1% growth figure, and a favourable currency and inflation environment cannot alone drive the acceleration South Africans need.

The new sectors were chosen specifically for their capacity to absorb workers with lower skill levels, with young people a particular priority. Mining contributes about 6% of GDP and supports 470,000 jobs, while producing 77% of the world’s platinum group metals and ranking among the top five globally in gold, vanadium and diamond reserves. Tourism drew 10.5 million visitors last year and contributed about 5% of GDP. More than R2 trillion in private energy and infrastructure investment is scheduled for the next decade. Adrian Gore, who chairs Business Leadership South Africa and serves as a co-convenor of the partnership, said these sectors can support annual growth of 3% to 5%, though he cautioned that new work streams will take time to filter through to the broader economy.

“What started as a platform to address multiple crises has evolved into a platform for growth and shared prosperity,” Ramaphosa said at the Johannesburg launch. “We both seek an economy that is growing, an economy that is creating jobs, and an economy that includes those who have been left outside it for too long.”

Meanwhile, the partnership has added a third pillar addressing what it calls confidence multipliers, covering crime, corruption, and local government failures. Youth employment runs as its own work stream and as a cross-cutting goal across all initiatives. The City of Johannesburg has been identified for particular focus, accounting for about 17% of national GDP and hosting headquarters or operations for 85% of South African companies. Martin Kingston, co-chair of the partnership’s steering committee, said the city’s trajectory has deteriorated quickly and that business leaders want a competent, credible counterpart in city government with authority to act.

“We’ve identified CEO sponsors who’ve already stepped up to the plate and are prepared to lead from the front. We’ve got the resources in place. There are many areas where we think we can make a difference, but we can only do so under the right circumstances and at the right time,” Kingston told Business Day.

For more details on the partnership’s strategy and targets, visit https://www.businessday.co.za/news/2026-08-21-how-business-and-government-plan-to-push-south-africas-growth-past-3/

The framework has shown that coordinated action between government and business can produce tangible results where systemic constraints once seemed immovable. Whether it can sustain that momentum across four new sectors, while simultaneously arresting the decline of the country’s most economically significant city, is the question that will define whether millions of South Africans waiting outside the economy finally get a way in.