Young people may enter the world of work in very different circumstances, but their aspirations are often the same. They want a decent job, a reliable income, and the security to plan for the future.
For many, that path is becoming harder. According to the ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, global youth unemployment rose to 12.4 percent in 2025, equivalent to 67 million unemployed people aged 15 to 24 years. At the same time, the share of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) increased slightly to 20 percent, affecting more than 257 million people.
In developing economies, unemployment figures reveal only part of the picture. Many young people cannot afford to remain without work, so they take informal or unstable jobs instead. Nearly nine in ten young workers in low- and lower-middle-income countries are employed informally, limiting their access to stable incomes and social protection.
The challenge is therefore not only to create more jobs. Young people need decent work that offers security, dignity, and a foundation for adulthood. They also need social protection that continues to support them as they move between education, training, and work.
This is the jobs and protection gap that the UN Secretary-General's Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions was created to close: a global push to generate 400 million decent jobs and extend social protection to the four billion people currently living without it. Across 20 Pathfinder countries that have formally endorsed national roadmaps, the UN Joint SDG Fund works alongside the Technical Support Facility, bringing in ILO, FAO, UNICEF, UNDP, UN Women and WFP, with UN Resident Coordinators steering implementation on the ground with governments. Within that architecture, a growing number of joint programmes are proving what it takes to make protection reach young people directly.
Rwanda: one pilot, a national ripple effect
In Rwanda, the national roadmap is built around a wide set of youth measures, from expanded vocational training to a strengthened Youth Investment Facility Fund, aimed at closing the country's employment gap for young women who are out of school and out of work. Within that roadmap, one quick-win pilot became the clearest example in the portfolio of young people shaping a programme from the inside.
In Rubavu District, 62 young women received integrated skills training, entrepreneurship support, and start-up toolkits across five trades: tailoring, welding, coffee making, transport, and hairdressing. The support was designed around the barriers that had kept them out of work: gender inequality, limited mobility, and restricted access to finance. District authorities co-implemented the pilot by identifying and mobilizing the participants themselves. All 140 people reached through training, outreach, and consultation were young.
The lessons are now feeding into Rwanda's national employment promotion systems and its government-endorsed Global Accelerator roadmap. The local pilot is informing the country’s approach to employment policy, as well as a formalization action plan that maps how extending social security to self-employed people could reach more than 100,000 workers not yet covered by any scheme.
Albania: skills that lead somewhere lasting
In Albania, the Lifelong Empowerment and Protection (LEAP) joint programme, implemented with the National Agency for Employment and Skills, is turning training into a durable route into work. It has also developed the portfolio's largest youth cohort, reaching 1,125 young people among the 2,221 people trained so far.
Of these, 634 at-risk and NEET youth across 15 municipalities gained soft, digital**,** and green skills through the "Journey Toward Employment" curriculum. The model is now becoming a mandatory pre-employment course linked to Albania's Youth Guarantee Scheme.
Behind the numbers are stories like Altina Paloka's. At 29, she completed a vocational culinary course, secured an apprenticeship, and moved into full-time work in a professional kitchen.
"The course gave me confidence and helped me find a job that I enjoy," she says. "I learned many things I never knew before, from traditional dishes to modern cooking techniques."
Altina is one of 56 women and men trained in Lezha alone. She is part of a wider group that the joint programme has helped move from the margins of the labour market into formal work and the social insurance coverage that has long been lacking in the tourism sector. At the same time, the programme is building the policy foundations for a Universal Child Benefit and extending social insurance to seasonal workers who have never had it.
Viet Nam: a tool young people helped design themselves
In Viet Nam, where the green transition is reshaping which jobs exist and who can reach them, the joint programme went a step further. Alongside training young people for green jobs, it asked them to help design the guidance tool that would point others towards those opportunities. The programme is jointly implemented with the World Bank as part of the Multistakeholder Engagement to Implement the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions and the World Bank Social Protection and Jobs Compass (M-GA).
Working with the Institute of State Organizational and Labour Sciences, the joint programme is piloting an updated, gender-responsive career guidance tool shaped through consultations that put young people, especially young women, rural youth, ethnic-minority youth, and youth with disabilities, at the centre of its design.
At the same time, a parallel study with the Viet Nam Women's Union looked at why women leave the social insurance system and what care credit mechanisms and policy reforms could help them stay. Of the 903 people the programme engaged in 2025, 200 were young people, most through direct dialogues rather than one-way training. The validation event that closed the process carried a title that could double as the whole approach's mission statement: "Youth at the heart of the discussion on green transition."
Building systems young people can grow into
Rwanda, Albania, and Viet Nam sit within different national roadmaps, yet together they show what building employment promotion and social protection into an economy can look like. In Viet Nam, it is a career-guidance tool that young people helped design themselves. In Albania, it is a curriculum that has moved from a pilot to a permanent course within the national training system. In Rwanda, it is a local pilot already shaping how the country designs employment policy.
Each step took several actors working in the same direction. Governments set the priorities, financing reached training centres and district offices, and technical support helped public institutions turn plans into services that run day to day. What ties the three together is simpler than this machinery. These systems exist to support young people’s choices, work and daily lives.
As more Pathfinder countries move from endorsed roadmaps into implementation, this is the common thread worth building on. Decent work and social protection must be integrated into national roadmaps, training, and local service delivery, one step at a time.
Note:
All joint programmes of the Joint SDG Fund are led by UN Resident Coordinators and implemented by the agencies, funds, and programmes of the United Nations development system. With sincere appreciation for the contributions from the European Union and Governments of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Arab Gulf Programme for Development for a transformative movement towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.
