Publication: Daily Maverick
Author: Siyabonga Goni
Photo: Gallo Images/Phill Magakoe
As graduation season returns and many celebrate this milestone with family and friends, past graduates face a crisis of unemployment, as highlighted in the recent Stats SA report showing that the unemployment rate for graduates with a bachelor’s degree or higher was 10.3% in February 2026.
While a new cohort of graduates is celebrating their hard work after a long academic battle in the hope using their degrees to gain employment, the reality of finding a job is that it remains difficult, with many existing graduates struggling to find employment.
With more than a million students enrolled in public universities and an annual graduation output of 220,758 students, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) is producing a surplus of graduates who might find it difficult to get employed, with Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) revealing that unemployment has increased among graduates. Industries such as education, construction, safety and security, and agriculture are providing jobs, while others are experiencing a downturn.
In the department’s 2024/2025 annual report, universities produced 31,316 graduates in teacher education, a higher number than the planned 30,000. A total of 207 graduates were produced in veterinary science, 3,620 in doctoral programmes, 11,851 in engineering, 10,218 in natural and physical sciences, 8,873 in human health sciences, and 778 in animal health sciences.
Meanwhile, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges enrolled 564,089 students, but only 18,195 graduates were placed into workplaces, a shortfall from the planned 21,000.
Daily Maverick spoke to university graduates who attained their qualifications years ago but are still facing difficulties in finding jobs.
Graduates facing hardship
They spoke of how difficult it had been to find employment since finishing tertiary education. Kwenadi Kamogelo Kwadi, a graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering Technology degree from Nelson Mandela University, said that after graduating almost two years she had not found employment.
“I’m in this internship that is ending at the end of August, and it’s something not even related to what I’ve studied. There’s just this underlying fear that I don’t really have anything solid.
“I live with anxiety. Some days or nights when I wake up, I have panic attacks because of all the time that I invested and the little money that I was getting from home when I was in varsity, and how much I have sacrificed and how much they have sacrificed. And unfortunately, things are not going the way that you thought they would. It’s the most devastating thing… I knew I wanted to study engineering, and then I got exposed to marine engineering at varsity, and I got interested in it,” said Kwadi.
A Cape Peninsula University of Technology Information and Technology Honours graduate, who wanted anonymity, said every time he applied for a job the negative responses were painful.
“I graduated two years ago, if not three. I have never been employed. As a young man there are expectations back at home. Every student, whenever they graduate, their parents expect something from them. I have been unemployed for a couple of years, and it does something to me psychologically. It doesn’t affect only me; it affects my family and the people around me, because there are so many people who would want to see me succeed,” he said.
Daily Maverick also briefly spoke to a fashion graduate from Nelson Mandela University, who also asked for anonymity and said there had been no sign of employment. She said she had dropped her fashion dream.
“I ended up baking cakes. It wasn’t easy (to let go of fashion); it broke because I had to sell my sewing machine to pay for baking classes,” said the graduate.
Caesar Smile, a graduate in Chemistry from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, said he could not find employment in the chemical industry and had to do another course at Walter Sisulu University.
“There was a stage when I felt useless because I spent time doing chemistry, and I felt like I had wasted my time. I reached a point of depression because I was known as a graduate at home, not working. I had to try to study another qualification, and it is still the same case. I had to apply with a letter of completion because I owed the previous university money. This is really depressing,” said Smile.
Who has been absorbed and where?
Despite many students graduating from various fields, only a few are absorbed into the workforce. Daily Maverick spoke to Department of Employment and Labour spokesperson Teboho Thejane, who said that the job opportunities registered by employers on the Employment Services of South Africa for the period April 2025 to October 2025 were mainly in the agriculture sector, followed by safety and security, construction and education.
Referring to the recent Stats SA report, he said: “In the third quarter of 2025, most graduates were absorbed in the Community, Finance and Trade industries. In the fourth quarter of 2025, most graduates were absorbed in the Community, Private Households and Trade industries; The most significant declines were observed in the Finance and Transport industries between the third and fourth quarters of 2025.”
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