GENEVA – A new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) has found that Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) stood out as the only region to show a decline in both the youth unemployment rate and not in employment, education or training (NEET) rate, nine of the Caribbean countries saw youth unemployment increase between 2023 and 2025.
“The Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the future” report shows that the global youth unemployment rate rose to 12.4 per cent in 2025, equivalent to 67 million unemployed people aged 15 to 24 years.
The report finds that 20 of the 31 countries and territories in the Latin America and Caribbean subregion experienced rising youth unemployment. Even more strikingly, among 11 Caribbean island countries with available data, nine saw youth unemployment increase between 2023 and 2025.
Trinidad and Tobago is among 18 countries and territories identified by the ILO as having a youth unemployment rate for 20 to 24 year olds at a decade-long high, excluding the pandemic period. First-time jobseekers are facing a tougher road to decent work.
“Latin America and the Caribbean stands out as the subregion where country-level results diverge considerably from the overall direction of the youth unemployment trend over the 2023–25 period, reflecting variation across countries in both the trends and the factors underpinning them.
“Even though 20 of the 31 countries and territories that make up the subregion showed a trend of rising youth unemployment rates, the subregional rate declined by 1.4 percentage points This was because the dominant countries in the subregion in terms of population size – Brazil, Colombia and Mexico – fell within the minority of countries with declining youth unemployment rates.
“The small Caribbean island countries, in particular, and their youth unemployment outcomes are lost in the subregional outcomes based on weighted results. There were 11 island countries with available data, 9 of which showed an increase in the youth unemployment rate from 2023 to 2025,” the reported noted.
The ILO report found that globally, youth unemployment is rising as stagnant economic growth and weak job creation increase barriers to job entry for young people and push more of them outside employment, education or training.
It said that some of the sharpest rises in youth unemployment have been in higher-income economies, frustrating the aspirations of millions of young people at the start of their working lives.
Between 2023 and 2025, youth unemployment rates increased in eight of the world’s 11 subregions, as slowing economic growth, weak job creation, geopolitical tensions and rapid technological change push countries toward a new youth jobs crisis.
“A generation that cannot find decent work cannot build its future with confidence. When young people are locked out of quality employment, countries lose talent, productivity and social cohesion. Creating decent jobs for young people is not just a social imperative, it is one of the smartest investments a country can make,” said Gilbert F. Houngbo, ILO Director-General.
The decline of many middle-skilled jobs is making it harder for young people to find stable careers. Jobs that have traditionally provided entry points for young workers – including clerical and administrative roles, service and sales occupations, manufacturing-related jobs and some technical occupations – are shrinking, according to the report.
In developing economies like the LAC, the challenge remains creating enough decent jobs to absorb growing young populations. Low unemployment rates conceal widespread labour market insecurity, as many young people cannot afford to remain unemployed and instead enter informal or unstable work.
Nearly nine in 10 young workers aged 15 to 29 in low- and lower-middle-income countries are employed informally, limiting their access to stable incomes and social protection.
The report finds that technological change, including advances in artificial intelligence (AI), is transforming opportunities for young workers. It estimates that 6.1 per cent of jobs held by young people aged 15 to 29 are in occupations highly exposed to AI-related changes.
Many of these overlap with the middle-skilled occupations that have declined in number for young people since 2023, particularly clerical and administrative roles. At the same time, demand continues to grow in some knowledge-based technical occupations in fields like science, health and engineering, highlighting the importance of ensuring that young people have access to the skills that match evolving labour market needs.
“There is increasing noise around AI,” said Sukti Dasgupta, ILO Director of the Employment, Skills and Sustainable Enterprises Department.
“While the direct impact on jobs is still unclear, we must not be complacent and underestimate the risks. We need to step up our investment in skills, lifelong learning and social protection so that young people can adapt to change and seize new opportunities. Technological progress, including AI, must work for young people, not against them.”
The report calls for renewed action to help young people navigate an increasingly uncertain world of work.
Key policy measures include adopting a human-centred approach to AI governance, ensuring that innovation creates opportunities rather than deepening inequalities; investing in quality education, lifelong learning and apprenticeships; strengthening employment services and labour market institutions to support young people’s transitions into work, targeting especially young women; expanding social protection and ensuring rights at work, particularly for young people in vulnerable situations and creating more decent job opportunities through supportive macroeconomic and sectoral policies.
The report concludes that the challenge is not only to create more jobs for young people, but to ensure that these jobs provide security, dignity and opportunities for successful transitions into adulthood.
It said rebuilding confidence among today’s youth will require renewed investment in decent work, stronger labour market institutions, and policies capable of helping young people navigate an increasingly uncertain future while ensuring that technological progress and economic transformation work for, rather than against, the next generation.
