Amman – Sunday, August16, 2026
The Phenix Center forEconomic and Informatics Studies warned that the Arab region is facing adeepening crisis in youth employment, stressing that the continuation ofcurrent economic policies without serious review threatens a “bleak future” forlarge segments of Arab youth.
The warning came in areport by the Center analyzing the findings of the International LabourOrganization’s report, Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, whichrevealed that the Arab States recorded the highest youth unemployment rateamong all regions of the world.
According to thereport, the youth unemployment rate in the Arab States reached 26.2 percent in 2025,more than double the global average of 12.4 percent. The number of unemployedyoung people in the region stood at approximately 2.6 million, and is expectedto rise to 2.8 million by 2027, while the unemployment rate is projected toremain at around 26 percent in the coming years.
The Phenix Center notedthat the limited recovery experienced by youth labor markets globally followingthe COVID-19 pandemic has stalled. The global youth unemployment rate roseagain to 12.4 percent in 2025, after reaching its lowest level in two decadesin 2023, bringing the number of unemployed young people worldwide to 67.3million. The Center pointed out that young people are now more than three timesas likely to be unemployed as adults, highlighting the growing difficulty facedby new labor market entrants in securing their first job.
The report identifiedanother particularly concerning indicator: the proportion of young people whoare not in employment, education or training (NEET). This rate reached 32.4percent in the Arab States in 2025, meaning that nearly one in every threeyoung Arabs is outside both the education and employment systems. This amountsto 11.6 million young people, a figure expected to rise to 12.2 million by2027. The Phenix Center warned that prolonged exclusion from education andemployment leads to greater loss of skills and confidence in institutions,making it increasingly difficult for this group to return to economic activityover time.
One of the report’s keyfindings is that higher education does not provide a guaranteed pathway toemployment in the Arab region. On the contrary, the unemployment rate amongyoung people with university degrees stands at approximately 25.6 percent,compared with only 8.6 percent among those with secondary education and 9percent among those with basic education. The Phenix Center attributed thisparadox to the limited capacity of Arab economies to generate jobs that matchyoung people’s increasingly higher levels of education, amid the continuedreliance of these economies on sectors with limited value added.
The report alsorevealed a sharp gender gap in Arab labor markets. Globally, the rate of youngwomen who are not in employment, education or training stood at 27.4 percent,compared with 13.1 percent among young men. This gap is even wider in the Arabregion and North Africa due to unpaid domestic care responsibilities,inadequate childcare services, discrimination in the labor market, and limitedaccess to safe transportation. The Center cautioned that the narrowing of thegender education gap in many Arab countries has not yet translated intocomparable economic gains for women.
The Center warned thatthe rapid technological transformation, particularly the rise of artificialintelligence, is entering Arab labor markets that already suffer from deepstructural imbalances, potentially making its impact on young people moresevere than in other parts of the world. According to the UN report,approximately 6.1 percent of jobs held by young people globally are highlyexposed to the effects of artificial intelligence, and around 5.6 million youngpeople could lose their jobs if just 10 percent of these jobs were displaced.
The Center noted thatmedium-skilled jobs, including clerical and administrative positions that havetraditionally served as an entry point for Arab youth into the labor market,are among the categories most vulnerable to decline.
The Phenix Centerstressed that the persistence of these imbalances affects more than just labormarkets. It also delays young people’s economic independence, perpetuatespoverty across generations, widens social inequality, and undermines confidencein institutions and public policies, increasing the likelihood of social andpolitical tensions. The Center emphasized that these challenges cannot beaddressed through security measures, as they are fundamentally an economic andrights-based crisis requiring structural solutions.
The Phenix Centercalled on governments across the Arab region to move away from treating youthemployment as a limited sectoral issue managed primarily by labor ministries,and instead make it a central objective of all economic and investmentpolicies. This should include evaluating such policies based on their actualability to create decent work opportunities, rather than focusing solely onoverall economic growth rates.
The Center also calledfor expanding social protection to cover new forms of work, investing inhigh-value-added sectors such as healthcare, technology and engineering, anddeveloping flexible education and training systems capable of keeping pace withrapid economic and technological transformations.