A strong macroeconomic policy framework has helped to improve growth performance over the past two decades, but the 2008-09 downturn highlighted the limitations of the domestic-demand-led growth path which has characterised South Africa in recent years. Unemployment, which had remained very high, if declining, throughout the boom years, turned up again in the recession. There is now a need both to ensure a rapid recovery from the downturn and to boost trend growth and thereby create the millions of jobs required to make full use of South Africa’s large supply of underutilised human resources.