Young people all around the world are struggling to find good and fulfilling jobs that can get them 2 00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:10,360 started on a career path to decent work. Today, we will be discussing why this is happening and what can be done about it. Welcome to the Future of Work podcast, the podcast of the International Labour Organization on the world of work. I am Enrique Leon. Our guest today is Sara Elder, who is the main author of the 2026 ILO Report on Global Employment
and Trends for Youth. She will help us understand the latest global indicators on youth employment and their implications. We will also hear from three young persons from Romania, Zimbabwe, and Mexico, who are youth representatives from the World Organization of the Scout Movement. They will share their own perspectives on how young people in the regions are being impacted 10 00:00:51,160 --> 00:00:55,640 and their view on what institutions should do about it. And Sara, thank you very much for being 11 00:00:55,640 --> 00:01:00,120 here with us today. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Let's begin with a little bit of background information.
The ILO just just published this report on global employment trends for youth. But it is not the first one that the ILO does. It's been doing it for over 20 years. Can you tell us why is it important for the ILO to make a report specifically about young people? It's true. We've been doing this report for more than 20 years now. We issued the first one in 2004. And we do it so that we can have conversations exactly like this one. It's how and how well young people transition to the labor market has a lot of importance.
It impacts on how well economies function and certainly it has a big impact on how young people feel about their contribution to economies. So, what we want to do with this report is to provide the evidence base. We use labour market statistics to generate regional and global estimates to take the temperature on how well young people are doing in their labour market transitions. And we do this to then encourage government to adjust their policy framework so that they can
make sure that young people have as smooth transitions as as possible. So you've analyzed the data and see the trends. How's it going? Because in the last one 2024, it showed that the unemployment was decreasing but it seems that right now that's not the case. So can you tell us what's happening? Is it really harder for young people to find a job now? It really is. Yes, in the 2024 report we were able to show a fairly rosy picture. We were
talking about a full recovery from the COVID crisis. Youth unemployment was down. So things were looking pretty good. Now, unfortunately two years later the storyline has reversed completely. So we've seen a rise in the youth unemployment rate. It's edged up to 12.4% globally. And perhaps more worrying is the rise that we see in the youth the share of young persons who are not in employment, education, or training. This is the the indicator that we call the NEETs.
This has risen from 19.7% to 20% in 2025. And this signals that young people are are receiving bad, they're giving up. They're they're becoming increasingly discouraged and are disengaging from the labor market. So all in all, yes, we can say that young people are increasingly facing difficulties. Oh, that's sad to hear. And have you seen differences among regions? There are
always big differences across the regions. Now, in this report there's some commonalities in the the sort of negative story line, unfortunately. So, in eight of our 11 sub regions, we've seen the youth unemployment rate rise, and in 10 of the 11 regions, we've seen the youth NEET rate rise. But, of course, the nuances are are there, and it's very important that that we point this out. So, I can give just three examples. So, we have, for example, in the Arab states and North Africa,
this is a region where the youth unemployment rates are historic- historically the world's highest. So, we're talking about more than 20% of young people actively trying to get a job and not succeeding. So, of course, they become discouraged, they fall out of the labour market, and the fact that this very high rate continues to increase shows that we have a really stubborn structural issue. And it's mainly young women that are are having to fall out of labour markets there. Then, we can contrast this with the story line in sub-Saharan Africa.
So, this is a region where we have very strong population growth, yet the unemployment rates, if we compare to other regions, is not actually that high. But, that's not a positive story line. It's really because very few young persons can afford to be unemployed in this region. We have nine in 10 young persons that have to take up work and in the informal economy, and we know that this means very low wages and very low returns. So, the story line is less about unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa and more about uh the NEET rates and the poor quality of jobs.
Finally, I give you one more region because it's important to talk also about what's happening in the developed economies. So, we had the story of Europe and North America. Here, you have rising unemployment rates. It's the unemployment rates that are high and youth NEET rates that are low, which means we have regions with strong institutions that keep young people in school, which is wonderful. But the problem when is when they emerge from school, they find it increasingly difficult to to find jobs. But when they do find those jobs,
they are mostly in the formal economy. So at least we have some some better quality of work there. So very different pictures for every region, but not really great in any of them. Well, since we're talking about young people now, let's hear from some young persons. We found some from different regions that can share with us their experience. So let's go first to Europe. Let's hear from Anca Sânpetrean from Romania and hear how how has she reacted
to these findings after reading the report. Let's hear from her. Hello. My name is Anca. I'm a 27-year-old Romanian, proudly representing World Scouting as a youth representative. After reviewing the data presented in the 2026 ILO Global Employment Trends for Youth Report, I have to say that while to most people this report may simply present numbers and data, to me those numbers bring to mind the faces and names of so many close friends and acquaintances who are still struggling to secure employment after months or even years of searching. I
think of those who have had to take whatever work they can find simply to have a source of income, regardless of whether it is in their field or far below their qualifications, just to accumulate what has increasingly become the new currency of our time in the job market, which is experience. I have to be honest and say that I felt oddly relieved when reading the report, as there is something strangely reassuring about knowing that this is not simply a personal failing, nor evidence that my generation is entitled or unrealistic. It is a structural, region-wide, and
generation-wide challenge affecting young people of all educational levels. I think that reframing matters, particularly for how young people understand and talk about their own experiences. It allows us to carry less shame and less self-blame, while also enabling us to demand urgent and meaningful change. Well, thank you, Anca, for your words and for reminding us that behind every number and every statistic, there's actually a young person struggling to find a job. So, back to you, Sara. What would you tell to Anca? Why is this happening? Why is it harder for
young people to find jobs now? I'm so impressed by what Anca had to say, and it really touches me that she finds herself and her friends in the report. It does mean that we are in the right direction. We are putting out information that is of relevance to them. She's absolutely right that this is not the fault of young persons. They are entering the labour market at a time of economic stagnation and geopolitical turmoil. And I mean, this is the main reason why we are where we are.
Yet, there's a bit more to it. So, we are we know that in past crises, it's always the the it's it's always young persons that bear the brunt of it, and the youth unemployment rate will always rise more than the adult unemployment rate. But something feels a bit different in this current situation, and it's mainly that we don't have a global economic crisis to to name. We can't say that this is like the the financial crisis of 2008. We don't have a name to
this crisis. It's just a situation of structural stagnation that is impacting young persons. So, it's it's it's a frustrating story, and I do feel so much for the young persons that are having to start out now. And we can also say that it's a storyline that that's impacting young labor market entrants. So, while the youth unemployment rate is going up, the adult unemployment rate is actually going down. So, this is us economic stagnation for young persons in particular. And
what about technology? Like with all their rise of AI and new technologies, how is this impacting young people? What does the report say about it? Oh, technology is very much part of the storyline. While we can talk about economic stagnation as the main cause, there's hanging in the shadow is the story of AI and technological change. And there's important nuances that we pull out in this report. We can show where the jobs for young persons have decreased in the occupations where they've
decreased. And we we talk about a hollowing out of the middle-skilled occupations. So, these are occupations that are in the clerical, services, and administrative jobs, also manufacturing jobs, and jobs that's linked to sales and services. Now, ironically, these a lot of these jobs just happen to map closely to the jobs that have been measured at most at risk to AI exposure. So, particularly in the clerical and service sectors. So, the fact that we have identified
that these are the jobs that are shrinking, and that these are the jobs that are most AI exposed, is too coincidental to say that AI is not playing a role. We can't yet talk about causality, but we can talk about coincidence. And of course, we've all heard the media stories that show that enterprises are simply not hiring the number of young job entrants because they know that AI can do those jobs. We could talk about I've heard stories about the journalist entities where
they're only hiring one research assistant, whereas they used to hire two research assistants, and that's because they're they're they're basing also the a lot of their jobs on on AI. Is is technology affecting in a different way in different regions? Certainly. Well, for the moment, AI generative AI is very much present in the developed economies. So, this is where the technology mainly rests for the moment. So, we do a measure to that looks at
at the regional level which jobs for young persons are most exposed. We say that there's 6.1 million jobs for young persons that are at risk of AI disruption. And most of these jobs for the moment still sit in the developed economies. So, largely North America and a lot in East Asia as well. But, it doesn't mean that developing economies won't be impacted as well because again, if there's, if we're talking about replacements, they're looking to start out there their labour market
entry in these jobs that are are very much at risk. And we can talk about some opportunities that could come if they happen to be able to get these AI skills that seem to be well sought after. But, for the moment we have to say it's a story that remains to be told. All right. Thank you very much for those insights. Now, let's hear from another young person. This time we go to the Americas, to Mexico. We'll hear from Isaura Rodriguez. Hello, my name is Isaura
Rodriguez. I'm 27 years old, and I'm a scout from Mexico. I think what resonates with me the most what resonates with me the most is this challenge and gap between being interested in certain topics and areas, having the opportunity to grow and strengthen those skills in the real professional field. Here in Mexico, sometimes young people believe that having certain educational level can open certain doors, but not necessarily in the areas they are interested in. And I think I have
lived that in personal experience, trying to match my social and environmental aspects I'm interested about and doing it in a sustainable project for my life. I think one of the biggest changes is to stop placing the whole responsibility on young people. We often ask young people to keep looking for opportunities, gaining experience, keep learning and educating themselves. But sometimes we stop focusing on how in an structural point of view we have to build all
together these opportunities, institutions, governments, businesses, organizations. Well, thank you very much Isaura for sharing those views and for reminding us to move the responsibility away from young people and thinking more of the institutional reasons of it. So Sara, back to you. What are your thoughts on what Isaura said about these gaps between education and what is required in the labour market? Yeah. Yes, again, I'm very impressed by what Isaura has to say. And she's absolutely right. I mean, we there's so much pressure for young persons to to get it right
and it feels like almost the task impossible. So we used to say just go get a general education, the pathways will open up in front of you. Now we see that this becomes increasingly challenging. And it's, they put a lot of pressure on themselves to study the right things. But we've seen cases where this this isn't going to work anymore. And the signals become very blurred from the the market. So you can talk about for example, the boom that we had on coding and
computing skills and young persons in Silicon Valley, for example, used to be scooped up before they would even finish their education. And now we hear that they're emerging from their degrees and still not finding work in the area of coding. So, it's again, they didn't do anything wrong when they entered their university system. They followed the, they chose an occupation that they thought was booming at the time. 3 years down the line, that occupation's no longer booming. So, it's become a very lopsided market. And the problem is
that there's simply not enough jobs to absorb the young persons that are emerging from the education systems. And this becomes extremely frustrating for the young persons who have very little options. They have they can either take up a job for which they're overqualified. They can maybe migrate to a country or a place where they can make use of the skills that they attained. Or they can wait it out. And waiting it out means that you have some financial means to fall upon and not a lot of young people have this financial means. So, Isaura is absolutely right. What can we do?
We say it takes a village, right? If we really want to make this a shared responsibility in helping our young persons to do as well as they can, to flourish and to become the the adults that we want them to be, then we have to pull upon all of the institutions and have an integrated youth employment policy, which means pulling on the ministries of economy to keep the economy booming. We need to pull upon the ministries of education. We need to talk about the ministries of labour who can put in place the active labour market policies that help young people transition.
Social protection is of course increasingly important and of course we need enterprises to open the door for young persons. Well, before we we talk a bit more about what institutions can do to support the young generation to find new jobs, let's hear from our third young person. So, this time we go to Africa to Zimbabwe. We will hear from Innocent Mudzingwa who will tell us his view on what governments, employers and worker organizations could do to support them.
Hello. My name is Innocent Tadiwanashe Mudzingwa. I'm 23 years old and I'm from Zimbabwe. The report's findings track closely with what I see every day and across Zimbabwe, young people are leaving schools and training programs with qualifications but not with a specific digital and practical skills which the employers are hiring for. And that gap is the real barrier, not ambition and not effort. Governments need to fund digital and vocational skills training at the same level they fund traditional education and make sure
that training is designed with input from the young people, not just for the young people. Businesses should build structured entry points like apprenticeships, mentorship pipelines, paid internships and convert them into real employment, not just short-term exposure. And workers organizations should actively bring young people into the conversations on labour policy so the system being built reflect how work is actually changing for our generations.
Well, thank you very much Innocent for your words and for very clear calls for funding, for gaining opportunities and for youth participation. Sara, back to you and building up on what Innocent is saying, what can our governments, our workers organizations and employers organizations do to support young people. Yeah. Innocent is right in pointing out that this is a very complex situation and dealing with youth employment and helping young persons to thrive in labour markets
requires a wide array of policies and policy approaches. We've been dealing in youth employment for quite a long time at the ILO. So, we know what the policy solutions are. But we still we know also that countries sometimes suffer struggle to to put the right investments in place because they're quite expensive. If we want to open the doors for young persons, you have to invest in active labour market policies. You have to make sure you have quality apprenticeship programs that schools are functioning in a way that's puts the
the them directly in touch with enterprises. There's there's really a lot that needs to happen to make it better for young persons. And we know that we can't rely just on our old tool belts of youth employment policies right now. We we're going to have to go up and be we're going to have to step it up. We're going to have to be more bold and adaptive in our policy approaches because of the story of AI and technological change which is changing a bit the story line. We will need to make sure that we come to terms with how to set the boundaries of of AI.
If we see that it's not functioning in a way that's positive for young people what will be the the the legal approach that we might want to take to make it a positive story line. We need to step up the social protection systems that make sure that young persons have a safety net to fall back on. Lifelong learning. There's there's a lot more that we can do to modernize employment services and international cooperation will need to to come back into play to
make sure that young persons across the globe have a fair chance at doing well in labour markets. I would like to follow up in the part when Innocent says that it would be good to actively bring young people to the conversation. Yes. What would you say about this? Absolutely, he's so right. He's so right. We talk about meaningful youth engagement and yet it's still very few countries are doing it in a proper way. If you are going to put into place youth employment policies, you need to make sure you're talking to the young people and making sure that they can raise their
voice about what they they need. Only they know what they need and if you try to do it without them, you're going to ultimately get it wrong. So bringing young people into the policy forum, having dialogues when you're setting the youth employment policy or youth employment strategy, making sure that young people have a voice and not just a voice but real real political leeway to shape what will be done for them. What recommendations would you give to young people that are about to enter the labour market? I always find this a hard question.
We need to make sure that young people keep their hopes alive. We know that there's a lot of anxiety out there right now. Just know that if I can say we've got your back, there are institutions like the ILO that are ready to work with our constituencies on the ground, with governments, with social partners to try to make sure that we can make your transition into labour market as smooth as possible. In the meantime, we ask you to please maintain your hope and to follow
your dreams and your pathway will open for you. Make as many contacts as you can and just keep keep keep moving and keep following your dreams. Thank you, Sara. And before we finish, I would like to ask you, well, we we've heard from three different young persons from different regions, to end this in a more positive way, what gives you hope for the future of youth employment? I mean, hearing from young leaders like Anca, Isaura, and Innocent gives me hope. Every time
we bring young persons to the table at the at the ILO or elsewhere, I'm always so impressed by their intelligence, their visions. They give me hope. And we have to maintain that they will be the ones that will drive the changes in the future. And we know that we'll we'll be in good hands. Well, with that very positive note of hope, we come to the end of our podcast. Thank you, Sara,
so much for being here with us today. Thank you, Enrique, it was really a pleasure. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us. If you'd like to find out more about the ILO Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, you can download the full report in our website at ilo.org. You can also subscribe to the ILO on the platform where you are watching or listening this. And you can follow the ILO on Facebook and LinkedIn at International Labor Organization, on YouTube at ILO, and on Instagram, X, Blue Sky, and Threads at ilo.org. Until next time, goodbye from the ILO's Future of Work podcast.
