The kids are not alright: Policy responses to jobs and social protection for the youth

Young people are now the unhappiest age cohort.

In a recent webinar, David Blanchflower, Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics at Dartmouth, shared with the ILO his concern around young people’s well-being. The concern started when he undertook an update of previous research where he analysed various datasets measuring subjective well-being. At the outset, he was secure in the assumption that results would fit to those of previous survey rounds (from 2009 to 2018) and show a classic U-shaped curve, where reported happiness levels of respondents were highest at the fringes of the age variable – that is, among youth and older persons and lowest among persons in middle age.

Much to his surprise, he said, newer results showed a sharp break from those previously reported; as of 2019, it is young people reporting the highest incidence of ill-being and the happiness U-shaped curve (and its inverse, the ill-being hump) no longer exists. There is now an inverse relationship between happiness and age – oldest cohorts express the highest degree of happiness, and the youngest, the lowest. Figure 1 shows the results for the United States, though Blanchflower’s most recent study confirms the same trends are found now almost everywhere, in countries across all regions of the world and representing both advanced and developing economies.

Figure 1. Incidence of “ill-being” by age in the United States, survey rounds 2009–18 and 2019–24

© David G. Blanchflower,Alex Bryson

© David G. Blanchflower,Alex Bryson

Source: David G. Blanchflower, Alex Bryson, Xiaowei Xu, “The declining mental health of the young and the global disappearance of the unhappiness hump shape in age”, PLoS One 20(8), 27 August 2025.

Waning job and income security feed youth anxieties and distrust in institutions

That young people today feel anxious, and more so than previous generations, was also highlighted in the ILO Global Employment Trends for Youth 2024, which noted that still 2 in 3 young persons felt stressed about job loss and job instability. They also worried about the state of the economy, the closing door on social mobility across generations and their prospects for financial independence.

There is no bypassing the links between trends in young people’s mental distress and the rise of social media and smart technologies. Such non-economic factors are clearly a central part of this story, Blanchflower acknowledges. But other factors come in as well, including challenges linked to the labour market, social protection gaps and how young people perceive their access to future security, prosperity and well-being.

Getting and keeping a job with the necessary labour and social protection, enjoying a work-life balance, paying rent, leaving the parental unit - many young people find there are no guarantees on any of these. In many countries, only a minority of young workers are lucky enough to have a job that comes with social security coverage, and many young women are still excluded from education and employment opportunities. This lack of protection and opportunities can be especially stressful to young people starting out in their school-to-work transitions, and their absence can impact how young people feel about institutions. Recent research shows that young people have a heightened sense of wariness of public institutions.[1]

Renewing youth’s trust in institutions

It is possible to rebuild young people’s faith in institutions. One way of doing so is to ensure that they can feel secure in their access to social protection and pathways to quality employment. Some promising measures in these areas include:

• Youth Guarantee programmes: With the financial backing of the European Commission, EU Member States have committed to ensuring all young people under the age of 30 receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, apprenticeship or traineeship since 2013 (and reinforced in 2020). Non-EU countries have followed suit, including the United Kingdom which recently announced an investment of £45 million to expand the Youth Guarantee trailblazer programme. While gaps in performance exist, such commitments are valuable and have had a role to play in the comparatively low shares of youth in EU countries that are neither in employment, education or training (NEET).
• Extending social security coverage to those not yet covered: As young people often enter the labour market in jobs that do not come with adequate social protection, efforts to extend and improve social security coverage are of critical importance for young people, including those in temporary, part-time and self-employment. India’s Social Security Law, for instance, marks a step in the right direction by extending coverage to platform workers, many of whom are young.
• Temporary wage or contribution subsidies: To facilitate the hiring of young workers on formal contracts, governments can step up their support to enterprises that hire youth, using tax incentives and other means of subsidizing the hiring of youth in formal jobs. Good practices exist across the globe, including in China, Jordan, Paraguay, and South Africa. Some governments like India implement active labour policies to directly encourage employment of young women, including through provisions of higher subsidies and prioritized assistance to female entrepreneurs.
• Job search / unemployment benefits: To ensure income security during the job search, the French government adopted a reform in 2025 to make it easier for unemployed youth without long working histories to access unemployment benefits, combined with access to public employment services and active labour market policies. Other EU countries have similar provisions for young graduates, as do an increasing number of other countries, including Algeria and Bahrain.
• Recognizing young people as a vulnerable population segment in terms of housing stability, the Republic of Korea now targets them in its housing policies through public housing and financial support.
• Investing in well-being in the workplace: Many enterprises are increasingly sensitive to the health and well-being of young workers and are stepping up action, including in Human Resource practices that embed “recharge days” and flexible entitlement choices. Some companies are also supporting intergenerational networks to reduce generational biases at the workplace and improve mentoring.
• Helping young people to understand their rights at work and engage in social dialogue is another innovation that can enhance youth agency and encourage them to advocate for the protection of their rights. The ILO Work Wise Youth: A guide to youth rights at work is a tool that can help.

Empowering youth to set their pathways toward security, prosperity and well-being rightly sits at the helm of ILO priorities for 2026. Continued collaboration with young people, governments, and social partners will be essential to rebuild young people’s trust in public institutions. This will entail not just showing good faith in promoting decent work, including social protection, for young people, but also taking real and brave action to scaling up policies that can sooth youth’s insecurities and ensure the kids are alright.

* The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ILO.

Christina Behrendt is the Head of the Social Policy Unit in the ILO’s Universal Social Protection Department in Geneva. She has worked and published on various aspects of social protection in both developed and developing country contexts.

Sara Elder is the Head of the Employment Analysis and Economic Policies Unit in the ILO’s Employment Policies Department in Geneva. She has written extensively on issues relating to the world of work and specializes in labour market analysis and employment policy development.