The South African youth unemployment rate is extremely high, at well over 50% of youth using the narrow definition of unemployment. This high unemployment rate has been a chronic problem and has been at these or similar levels since the democratic transition in 1994. Unemployment rates were probably also very high for a substantial period before 1994, but the lack of suitable data from that period makes precise measurement of the unemployment rates for that era quite impossible. We make use of the first three waves of the nationally representative longitudinal dataset obtained from the National Income Dynamics Study, to explore the factors that assist school leavers in finding employment. By means of descriptive statistics and regression analyses, we estimate the differences in job finding rates by gender, geographical location, educational attainment, household structure and migration status. Our results are not particularly surprising. Male youth, better educated youth, and youth who migrate from rural areas to urban areas tend to have better job prospects on leaving school.