Global Youth Unemployment Rate Rises to 12.4%, UN Warns of AI Risks
The International Labour Organization reports that the global youth unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24 will rise to 12.4% by 2025, an increase corresponding to approximately 67 million unemployed youth, reversing the post-pandemic improvement trend.
During the same period, the proportion of youth who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) has risen to 20%, affecting over 257 million people, with the rate in low-income countries reaching as high as 27.9%.
The main reasons for the increase are slowing economic growth, geopolitical tensions, and weak job creation, with a reduction in medium-skilled positions further hindering youth employment; the youth unemployment rate in Arab countries is the highest at 26.2%, North Africa at 22.6%, and North America has also risen from 8.3% to 9.8%.
The International Labour Organization estimates that 6.1% of existing jobs for youth aged 15 to 29 are highly exposed to AI-related changes, and if 10% of these jobs were to disappear completely, approximately 5.6 million youth could face unemployment, career changes, or exit from the labor force, primarily concentrated in high-income countries.
The report highlights the rising anxiety among youth regarding job replacement by AI and income stability, while warning that traditional entry-level positions in medium-skilled administrative and sales roles are being hollowed out.
From a market mechanism perspective, this data is driven by both labor supply-demand dynamics and technological shocks, with youth employment pressures prompting policy and educational shifts towards skills retraining, funding flowing towards AI-related high-skilled positions and re-education services, while low-skilled and medium-skilled entry-level positions face pressure, accelerating adjustments in the youth labor market in high-income countries.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The International Labour Organization has been releasing reports on youth employment trends since 2004. After the pandemic, the youth unemployment rate had dropped to a 20-year low, but it is projected to rise again in 2025 due to a combination of slowing growth and technological changes, mirroring the vulnerability of youth employment seen after the 2008 financial crisis, while also exposing structural issues related to the decline of medium-skilled positions.
In terms of capital pathways, AI is accelerating the replacement of routine cognitive tasks, leading companies to shift their hiring focus towards high-skilled and human-machine collaborative positions, with funding and training resources leaning towards reskilling and digital literacy, motivated by the desire to reduce labor costs and enhance productivity, while pushing youth from traditional entry-level positions into more uncertain competition.
Similar cases can be seen in the lagging transformation of low-skilled workers during the industrial revolution and automation waves, as well as the skills mismatch among youth following the internet bubble in the 2000s; currently, the world is in the early stages of AI penetration, with youth employment shifting from a quantity issue to challenges of quality and matching.
The structural judgment belongs to technological substitution: AI directly compresses medium-skilled entry-level positions, with the mechanism being automation replacing repetitive tasks, severing the traditional ladder for youth transitioning from low-skilled to high-skilled jobs, forcing the labor market to accelerate polarization towards both ends.
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