Key Details
Global youth unemployment increased from 12.3% in 2023 to 12.4% in 2025, representing 67.3 million unemployed young people.
The global Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) rate rose from 19.7% to 20%, adding nine million young people and taking the total to 257.1 million.
6.1% of jobs held by people aged 15–29 are in occupations with the highest exposure to generative AI. This indicates potential task exposure — not actual job losses.
The Southern Asia Signal
Youth unemployment increased from 13.8% in 2023 to 14.3% in 2025 and is projected to remain at 14.4% through 2027.
The region had an estimated 18.1 million unemployed youth and 95.8 million NEET youth in 2025.
Nearly 79.6% of unemployed people aged 20–29 were seeking their first job, indicating that labour-market entry — not merely movement between jobs — is a central challenge.
The detailed regional tables place Southern Asia’s youth employment-to-population ratio at 29.3%, below the global rate of 37.1%.
The Post-Pandemic Improvement Has Stalled
The ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026 finds that the post-pandemic improvement in youth employment has ended. Youth unemployment increased or remained broadly unchanged in eight of 11 subregions between 2023 and 2025.
The NEET rate reveals a deeper problem because it captures young people who are neither working nor accumulating education or skills, including those no longer actively seeking work.
The challenge is therefore broader than job creation: young people must be able to enter work, remain economically engaged and access employment with income security and social protection.
First-Time Entry Is Southern Asia’s Central Challenge
Nearly 79.6% of unemployed 20–29-year-olds in Southern Asia were first-time jobseekers, up from 64.8% around 2016 — the highest share among the regions examined.
This points to a significant education-to-work bottleneck: many young people are struggling to obtain their first foothold in the labour market.
The figure is based on the latest available labour-force data for three Southern Asian countries, with different reference years. It is therefore a regional estimate, not an India-specific figure.
Higher Education Is Not Producing Easier Entry
Youth unemployment in Southern Asia rises sharply with educational attainment:
Educational level | Youth unemployment, 2025 |
|---|---|
Basic education | 3.0% |
Secondary education | 6.4% |
Tertiary education | 15.5% |
This suggests a mismatch between the supply of educated workers and suitable employment opportunities. It does not mean education reduces employability: financial necessity may push less-educated youth into informal or low-paid work rather than allow them to remain unemployed.
Southern Asia added 9.3 million youth jobs between 2016 and 2025, yet the first-entry problem persists. Employment across low-, middle- and high-skilled occupational groups also declined between 2023 and 2025 in the five Southern Asian countries covered by that analysis.
Young Women Face Exclusion Beyond Unemployment
Southern Asia’s NEET rate reached 25.8% in 2025 and is projected at 26.1% by 2027, potentially increasing the number of NEET youth from 95.8 million to 96.9 million.
A young woman in Southern Asia was 3.5 times as likely to be NEET as a young man. The ILO links the disparity to unpaid care, discrimination and limited access to suitable employment, rather than lower participation in education.
This makes the policy challenge broader than skilling. Safe transport, childcare, workplace conditions and the distribution of unpaid care can also determine whether women enter employment.
What Does NEET Mean? NEET refers to young people not in employment, education or training. It captures forms of labour-market disengagement that unemployment statistics can miss.
AI Is an Emerging Risk, Not the Main Explanation
Globally, 6.1% of jobs held by young people aged 15–29 are in occupations most exposed to generative AI, particularly clerical and administrative work.
In an illustrative stress scenario, eliminating 10% of these highly exposed jobs could leave 5.6 million young workersneeding another job, becoming unemployed or leaving the labour force. This is a scenario, not a forecast.
The report finds stronger evidence of a wider erosion of middle-skilled entry routes, including clerical, sales, skilled-trade and machine-operation jobs. AI could accelerate this shift, alongside weak job creation, structural change and employers’ demands for prior experience.
Policy Relevance
Although the report does not publish India-specific estimates, its Southern Asian findings are highly relevant to India because of the country’s weight in the regional labour market.
Measure the school-to-work transition: India needs regular data on how long young people take to obtain their first job, which groups remain unsuccessful and whether employment matches their qualifications.
Create entry routes, not only training places: Apprenticeships, paid internships and employer-linked programmes should be assessed by conversion into sustained employment rather than enrolment or certification.
Address educated unemployment through job creation: The Southern Asian evidence suggests that expanding higher education and skilling cannot substitute for sufficient growth in suitable entry-level jobs.
Reduce barriers facing young women: Employment policy must work alongside childcare, safe transport, workplace flexibility and measures addressing unpaid care responsibilities.
Extend protection across fragmented careers: Young people combining salaried work, freelancing, platform work and self-employment require portable social-security coverage.
Track AI’s effect on entry-level work: Monitoring should distinguish between tasks being automated, jobs being redesigned and positions disappearing, particularly in clerical and administrative occupation.
Follow the Full Report Here: ILO Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the Future