President Cyril Ramaphosa has described the country's unemployment rate as a "deep and serious crisis".
He was speaking on Thursday after receiving a report on progress made in implementing resolutions reached at last year's Jobs Summit in .
Stats SA announced this week that the country was facing its highest unemployment rate in 11 years. The unemployment rate rose from 27.6% in the first quarter of the year to 29% in the second, an increase of 1.4 percentage points.
SA's unemployment rate is about six times the estimated global jobless rate of roughly 5%.
According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter there are 6.7 million unemployed people in South Africa between the ages of 15 and 64, an increase of of 455 000 over the first quarter.
According to Stats SA, seven out of ten South Africans without work have been looking for work for a period of a year or longer.