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A new report by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) has warned that worldwide youth unemployment reduced after the COVID-19 pandemic but is now beginning to worsen again.
The report, The Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the future, was published on August 11, 2026. It shows that youth unemployment, which reached a two-decade low in 2023, has begun to rise.
According to the report, the global youth unemployment rate rose to 12.4 per cent in 2025, leaving around 67 million young people aged 15-24 unemployed. At the same time, the share of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) increased to 20 per cent, up from 19.7 per cent in 2023. This means that 257 million young people were NEET in 2025, nine million more than two years earlier.
Youth unemployment worsened or stayed flat in eight of 11 global subregions between 2023 and 2025, and 105 countries saw youth unemployment rise, compared with only 58 where it fell.
Rates also increased across high-income, lower-middle-income and low-income economies.
The Arab States and North Africa continue to record the world’s highest youth unemployment rates at 26.2 and 22.6 per cent, respectively.
The increase in the youth unemployment rate between 2023 and 2025 was most pronounced in North America, where the rate climbed from 8.3 per cent to 9.8 per cent.
Northern, Southern and Western Europe saw smaller increases, but at 15 per cent, the overall rate of youth unemployment across the three subregions remained very high.
In developing economies, the challenge is often not just unemployment but the lack of secure, formal jobs. Many young people who cannot afford long periods without income turn to informal work.
Nearly nine in 10 young workers in low- and lower-middle-income countries work informally, often without adequate labour protections or social security.
The ILO pointed to a decline in middle-skilled jobs as a key factor making it harder for young people to enter the workforce. Clerical, administrative, sales, and manufacturing jobs, which traditionally provided young workers with initial career entry points, are rapidly shrinking.
The combination of rising unemployment, shrinking middle-skilled opportunities and widespread informal work is making the transition from education to employment increasingly difficult for millions of young people.
At the same time, artificial intelligence is creating new uncertainty. Around 6.1 per cent of jobs held by people aged 15-29 are in occupations highly exposed to AI-related changes. If just 10 per cent of these jobs disappeared completely, up to 5.6 million young workers could be affected.
In contrast, high-skilled fields such as science, engineering, healthcare and information technology continue to create opportunities.
To address rising youth unemployment, the report calls for stronger, adaptive youth employment policies focused on four priorities: creating jobs, improving education and skills, supporting school-to-work transitions, and expanding social protection and inclusion. Ultimately, the challenge is not simply to create more jobs, but to ensure that young people can find decent work that offers security, dignity and a pathway to a stable future.
