On International Youth Day, there is a temptation to celebrate young people as the promise of tomorrow. But for millions of young people, particularly in countries where employment opportunities remain limited, tomorrow is not the main concern. The immediate question is much more basic: where is the work?
This is where the International Labour Organization’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026 becomes particularly relevant to Ethiopia. Its message is neither simply optimistic nor pessimistic. Youth labour markets have recovered in important respects in recent years, but that recovery has not translated into an easy transition from education to secure and productive employment for everyone. Progress has stalled in important areas, while the pathway into working life remains difficult for many young people.
For Ethiopia, the significance of this global picture is greater than simply comparing one country with another. It forces us to confront a difficult reality: when employment opportunities are insufficient, decent work can begin to sound like a luxury.
A young graduate who has sent dozens of applications without receiving a response may not initially ask whether a prospective employer provides adequate social protection, career development or a safe working environment. A young person supporting a family through irregular income may first ask whether there is an income at all. And someone entering the labour market for the first time may accept almost any opportunity because unemployment offers no alternative.
But this is exactly where the debate about decent work becomes important.
The scarcity of jobs should not become an excuse for the scarcity of rights.
Ethiopia cannot afford to create a false choice between employment and decent employment. The country needs more jobs, but it also needs to ensure that the jobs being created do not trap young people in a cycle of poverty, insecurity and vulnerability.
This distinction matters because having work and having decent work are not the same thing.
A young person working long hours for an income that cannot cover basic living costs may technically be employed. A graduate working without a written contract may be counted as employed. A young worker in an unsafe workplace may also be counted among those with jobs. Yet employment statistics alone cannot tell us whether that young person has actually achieved economic security or dignity.
This is one of the central questions Ethiopia must confront as its young population continues to enter the labour market.
The challenge is not merely to reduce unemployment figures. It is to build an economy capable of generating productive, sustainable and protected employment at the scale required by the country’s youth population.
And that is where the Ethiopian debate needs to move beyond the familiar language of “creating opportunities.”
Young people do not need opportunities only in speeches. They need pathways into the labour market.
For many, the transition begins with education and ends in a frustrating period of waiting. A university degree does not automatically translate into employment. Technical and vocational training does not guarantee a job. Even those with skills may struggle when the economy does not generate enough positions in which those skills can be used.
The result is a dangerous mismatch: young people are told to acquire skills, while the economy is not always generating sufficient demand for those skills.
This means Ethiopia’s youth employment strategy cannot place the entire responsibility on young people. Entrepreneurship, skills development and employability are important, but they cannot substitute for broader economic transformation.
Telling every unemployed young person to become an entrepreneur is not an employment strategy by itself.
Some young people will build successful businesses. Many others, however, need wage employment, apprenticeships, industrial jobs, agricultural opportunities, services-sector employment and other forms of productive work. A functioning labour market must provide multiple pathways rather than presenting entrepreneurship as the only acceptable alternative to unemployment.
There is also a deeper social dimension.
For a young person, prolonged unemployment is not simply the absence of a monthly salary. It can mean delayed independence, postponed family formation, dependence on parents, loss of confidence and exclusion from economic life. For households, one unemployed young person can represent another financial burden. At national level, prolonged youth unemployment means a generation of productive potential that is not being fully utilized.
That is why Ethiopia’s youth employment challenge should not be treated only as a labour-market issue. It is an economic, social and developmental question.
The ILO’s global assessment provides an important reminder that recovering youth employment numbers do not automatically mean that young people are entering secure and fulfilling working lives. For Ethiopia, the lesson should be even sharper: we need to pursue quantity and quality simultaneously.
First, there must be enough jobs.
Second, those jobs must increasingly become better jobs.
These are not competing objectives. They are connected.
A young worker cannot enjoy decent work if there is no work. But creating employment by normalizing extremely low wages, unsafe conditions, excessive working hours or insecure arrangements is not a sustainable solution either. It may reduce unemployment temporarily while reproducing working poverty.
The real policy challenge, therefore, is to make job creation itself a route toward decent work.
That requires stronger links between education and industry, practical school-to-work transition programmes, apprenticeships and first-job opportunities, support for labour-intensive sectors, and an environment in which enterprises can create sustainable employment. It also requires protecting young workers once they enter the workplace.
Because the first job matters.
A young person’s first experience of work can determine whether they build skills, confidence and a career—or whether they become trapped in precarious employment. The first workplace should therefore be viewed not simply as somewhere young people earn their first income, but as the beginning of their participation in the economy.
This is particularly important for young women, who can face additional barriers in accessing employment and progressing within the workplace. A youth employment strategy that does not seriously address gender disparities will leave a significant part of the country’s productive potential unused.
International Youth Day therefore offers Ethiopia an opportunity to ask a more uncomfortable question than “How many young people are employed?”
We should also ask:
What kind of work are they doing? How much do they earn? Are they safe? Do they have contracts? Can they develop their skills? Do they have a voice at work? Can employment provide a pathway out of poverty rather than simply a temporary escape from unemployment?
These questions may sound ambitious in an economy where jobs themselves are scarce.
But perhaps that is precisely why they must be asked.
Decent work should not be presented to unemployed young people as a luxury they can demand after the economy becomes prosperous. It should be treated as the direction in which employment creation must move from the beginning.
Ethiopia needs to create millions of productive opportunities, but the ambition should not stop at putting young people on payrolls. The ultimate objective should be to build a labour market in which employment contributes to dignity, economic independence and a better future.
On this International Youth Day, therefore, the message should go beyond celebrating the energy and potential of Ethiopia’s young population.
Young people do not need to be told repeatedly that they are the future.
They need an economy that gives them a meaningful place in the present.
And before we can ask whether every young Ethiopian has decent work, we must confront the harder question first:
Where is the work?
Then comes the question that cannot be postponed:
How do we make that work decent?
