South Africa’s unemployment rate stood at 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026: nearly one in three people in the labour force were out of work. The likelihood of you being one of those people depends on your education. For a degree holder, the unemployment rate is 12.2%, less than half the national rate. For someone who completed matric only, it is 35.7%, above the national average. For those who never finished secondary school, it reaches 37.6%.
The education premium
Getting any tertiary qualification – a diploma, certificate or degree – decreases your unemployment risk compared with stopping at matric. A diploma holder faces a 22.2% unemployment rate against a person with a matric’s 35.7%, a gap of around 13 percentage points. A degree narrows it further, to 12.2%: roughly a third of the rate faced by those who never completed secondary school. In a labour market where one in three people in the workforce cannot find a job, the return to post-school education is the difference between being well above or well below the national average.