Around 67 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed worldwide, a rate of 12.4%, according to new data from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The report, released Tuesday, shows a deterioration in the labor market for younger generations, highlighting that 257 million young people, or 20% of youth globally, are neither employed nor in education or training (NEET).
The 2025 figures represent a 0.1 percentage point increase in the youth unemployment rate compared to 2023, when the indicator fell to a historic low, and a 0.3 percentage point rise in the NEET rate. ILO experts attribute the rise in youth unemployment to factors including stagnant economic growth and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on employment.
“In the previous report, we painted a positive picture of young people benefiting from the recovery after the Covid-19 crisis, but the situation has changed amid economic slowdown and geopolitical tensions,” explained the director of the ILO’s Department of Employment and Sustainable Enterprises.
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Sukti Dasgupta warned that youth unemployment rose even as the overall unemployment rate declined slightly, meaning a young person is now four times more likely to be unemployed than an adult. The rise of AI has also not benefited this age group, since, according to the ILO, 6.1% of jobs currently held by young people are among those most exposed to the use of these new tools.
“There is a decline in mid-skill jobs, mainly administrative and office-based, which are the ones most at risk of being replaced by AI, and these occupations have traditionally served as an entry point for young people,” Dasgupta said at a press conference.
If just 10% of jobs exposed to AI were to disappear entirely, “this would translate into 5.6 million young people, mainly in high-income countries, at risk of unemployment, job change or leaving the labor market altogether,” she warned. The effects of AI may partly explain why developed regions like Western Europe and North America recorded some of the largest increases in youth unemployment: 0.8 and 1.6 percentage points, respectively.
However, the largest increase, at 1.8 percentage points, occurred in North Africa, which also has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world, at 22.6%, trailing only the Arab States (26.2%). Western Europe ranks third, at 15%, followed by East Asia (14.6%) and South Asia (14.3%), while Latin America and North America sit below the global average, at 11.9% and 9.8%, respectively.
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The lowest youth unemployment is in Sub-Saharan Africa (8.4%), though the ILO warns that in this and other regions with developing economies, the challenge lies in creating enough decent jobs to absorb the growth of the youth population.
In these areas, “many young people cannot afford to remain unemployed and instead take on informal or precarious work,” the organization notes, adding that nearly nine in ten workers between the ages of 15 and 29 are in the informal economy, which limits access to stable income and social protection.
“Geopolitical tensions and rapid technological change are pushing countries toward a new youth employment crisis,” the ILO concludes, recommending measures to promote well-paid work with social protection in order to avoid this trend.
“Creating decent jobs for young people is not just a social imperative, it is one of the smartest investments a country can make,” emphasized ILO Director-General Gilbert Houngbo.
