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Johannesburg - South Africans want President Jacob Zuma to focus on job creation in his State of the Nation address, market research company Ipsos said on Friday.
According to the survey, 90% of respondents believed unemployment was serious and needed to be dealt with urgently.
"More than half (55%) chose it as the most important issue," Ipsos said in a statement.
A total of 3 730 face-to-face interviews were conducted with randomly selected adult South Africans for the survey.
Sixty-one percent of the people questioned felt the government was not doing well in reducing unemployment by creating jobs.
South African expected moral leadership and accountability from the country's leaders.
Seventy-three percent of interviewees felt MPs should be fired for negligent spending. Only 8% disagreed.
More than half of respondents believed the ANC would live up to its election promises.
According to data from Statistics SA, the unemployment rate among young South Africans has been consistently higher than that of adults since the 2008 recession.
It found that the unemployment rate among youth - aged 15 to 34 - increased from 32.7% to 36.1% between 2008 and 2014.
Another survey showed that young people would rather work for the state than start a business, because they see government as the best way to earn a good living.
Research from the University of Cape Town (UCT) for the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) found that about two thirds (67%) of SA's youth surveyed think the government is the best way to earn a good living.
The GEM found that although entrepreneurship in the country is on an upward trend, young people are not entrepreneurially minded enough to sustain this.
- Sapa with Fin24
