Former Statistician-General Dr Pali Lehohla argues that South Africa’s escalating youth unemployment crisis is the result of deliberate policy failures rather than unavoidable economic conditions. In his commentary, he emphasizes the need for evidence-based or data-driven decision-making to identify the causes of joblessness among young people and to design effective interventions. Lehohla presents the crisis as worsening over time and links it to shortcomings in economic policy implementation, suggesting that existing approaches do not adequately address the underlying drivers of unemployment. While his remarks focus on the policy and planning side of the problem, he also frames reliable data and analytical capacity as central to improving outcomes for young South Africans. The piece calls for a stronger relationship between statistical information, policy choices and execution, positioning data as a tool for accountability and for developing strategies that can reduce youth unemployment. The overall thrust is that better use of evidence is necessary to reverse current trends, which he characterizes as continuing to intensify.