Coping with Unemployment - Young People’s Strategies and their Policy Implications

This report summarises the findings of a Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) project on young people’s strategies for dealing with unemployment and the implications these have for policy development. Our work included a review of government policies, commissioned research from leading experts and engagement with expert researchers from a variety of fields (politics, economics, sociology, anthropology) through two workshops. CDE focused on three key issues: • how young people are making the transition to adulthood; • how young people look for jobs and what they want to get out of employment; • how young people are using democratic processes to achieve their political aims. Informed insight into these issues will help the country formulate policies that are better targeted towards solving the most pressing problems that young people confront. A key challenge constraining the project was the paucity of South African research on critical questions, limiting the extent to which definitive findings can be made and recommendations offered.