Youth unemployment is a persistent global challenge with consequences for both individual well-being and sustainable development. Public employment programmes have been widely implemented to provide short-term employment and skills development opportunities. However, existing research has primarily focused on economic indicators of such programmes, with far less attention to the psychosocial resources that support longer-term transitions into decent work. This gap is particularly salient in the Global South, where unemployment rates remain among the highest worldwide. To partially address these gaps, this study will examine South Africa's Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES), implemented through the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI). The BEEI typically places over 200,000 unemployed youth with temporary employment as Education and General Support Assistants in public schools. Although designed as a short-term intervention, the programme provides an opportunity to assess the extent to which public employment programmes, like the BEEI, can strengthen participants' psychosocial resources and contribute to pathways into sustainable and decent work. We will adopt a quasi-experimental, longitudinal design, tracking psychosocial and economic outcomes across three survey waves: baseline (after selection but before placement), during employment, and after programme completion. A sample of approximately 5,000 BEEI applicants, comprising both beneficiaries (treatment group) and non-beneficiaries (control group), will be surveyed. Key variables include psychological resources (self-efficacy, self-esteem, personal initiative, belonging), indicators of well-being (quality of life), and economic measures (job search barriers and income). This design will enable stronger causal inference about how temporary public employment programmes, like the BEEI, shape young people's labour-market trajectories and psychosocial well-being. Our findings will generate policy-relevant insights with societal applications, illustrating the applied contributions psychology can make to addressing youth unemployment and informing the design of future youth unemployment interventions and policies in high-unemployment contexts.