Against the backdrop of war and deadly climate events, the cost of living is skyrocketing, and young people around the world are finding it harder and harder to get a halfway decent job. The global youth unemployment rate is over 12%, growing fastest in Europe and North America. But that doesn’t paint the whole picture: nearly a quarter of Americans are “functionally unemployed,” which means they have work that is unstable, informal, or earning poverty wages. The quagmire of unemployment and “underemployment” for young workers across the world is catching up to the advanced capitalist countries.

How many hours does one need to drive rideshare to make up the difference on their student loan payment when their other part-time job didn’t cover that and utilities? More and more, young people are going into the job market to find that the stable, relatively-comfortable future we were told exists is nowhere to be found. 

Why Can’t I Get a Job?

Young people already typically bear the brunt of economic downturns—we’re more vulnerable to layoffs, hiring freezes, and wage cuts because we generally lack experience. This “low hire, low fire” environment means companies are hiring fewer inexperienced applicants and they’re less willing to fire longer-standing employees. Ask any worker in their mid-twenties what their debt-to-income ratio is or how long they spent looking for their last job. Generally, employers seem to be feeling less inclined to take on hiring costs, and young people just entering the job market are getting hit the hardest, with some spending years hunting for work. 

AI-powered software was packaged as yet another solution to the flood of applications. However, it’s only trained on the data fed into it—and in a society with existing barriers to employment due to race, gender, or criminal history, these biases are reinforced by algorithms. Meanwhile, universities peddle AI-integrated digital job boards like Handshake, and more workers use AI tools to edit and send thousands of applications. Ultimately, AI is helping neither employers nor applicants to find what they’re looking for.

But while some call for more transparency with AI usage in hiring platforms, the root of the issue is that over half of employed US workers are currently looking for a different job, with most of them saying it’s because they aren’t earning enough to make ends meet. The jobs capable of lessening the burden of student loan debt are few and far between, hidden away behind dehumanizing algorithms and thousands of hours. Young, inexperienced workers who once struggled to be promoted internally can no longer even hope to job hop for better pay, benefits, or hours.

Driving Uber Or Warships—Young People Are Screwed Over

While there isn’t yet evidence that AI is simply making the jobs once held mainly by young people obsolete, the AI dystopia that the billionaires are so eager to shove down our throats is absolutely making for a more cruel and precarious job market. Tech corporations like Meta and Microsoft are pouring trillions into the AI data center buildout and taking on enormous debt to do it, all based on pure speculation that the demand for AI will grow and grow forever. To free up capital for their stock market gambles, they’ve carried out mass layoffs of over 370,000 workers since 2025. 

Some economists predict that one of the biggest impacts AI will have on the job market is giving employers the excuse to make workers more replaceable as they reconfigure their workforces with more temporary and freelance positions. Already, 64% of Gen Z relies on “income stacking” to pay the bills, combining part-time jobs with gig work through multiple apps. Add it all together and many young people are working full time or more, but with much lower overall pay and without any of the stability, benefits, or protections full-time workers often have. These jobs are also much more challenging to unionize, but there will be no choice but to fight to organize gig workers as they make up more and more of the workforce.

In countries like India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, where youth dominate the population, precarity and underemployment are the norm. Gen Z has led mass revolts across Asia and Africa, fighting against the insecurity in their futures. With youth unemployment a crisis in nearly every corner of the world, the situation is also ripe for the ruling classes to push working-class youth into the military. The Army’s desperation for bodies has reached ridiculous levels, offering soldiers four days off to play GTA VI if they reenlist. For many more of the young working class, military recruitment into administrative or communication roles, as well as active duty, will be relentlessly pushed on us. 

One horrifying example are the sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was deployed for a record-setting 250 days without any breaks and despite severe supply shortages—nearly all of them 18 to 25 years old. Hegseth and Trump continue to press on, stating that the Lincoln’s deployment was “not nearly long enough.” This is an especially dehumanizing line for the 19-year-old sailor who attempted suicide, who, instead of being offered mental health services or military discharge is now being punished and forced to return to work with potential wage cuts. 

The trajectory of a more militarized society, if the USS Lincoln is any indication, is the ruling classes of the world eagerly pushing unemployed young people into their militaries as pawns to exploit. The only way out is movements of students, workers, and young people, to build an alternative to brutal low-pay gig work or the Faustian deal of a military job. 

What Do We Do?

The reality is that capitalism cannot provide stable, well-paid work for the majority of people while also infinitely increasing the wealth of the billionaires. Instead, the system expects workers to squabble for the absolute scraps that are offered. This is the playbook—capitalism will always need what Marx called the “reserve army of labor” in order to push wages down and divide the working class. This layer of unemployed workers is kept out of the workforce until it is time to break a strike, expand the war machine, or take lower pay when capitalism finds itself in another crisis. This is not a failure of young people, but rather a natural consequence of the capitalist system. 

We call for solidarity instead—that workers earning less and treated worse across one section of our class shows us what the bosses will do to all of us as soon as they need to. Organized labor has a key role to play in building mass movements which call on students, all workers, and the unemployed to fight for demands like a massive unionized jobs program and a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay. 

Ultimately, the only way to fight the youth unemployment crisis is not on an individual basis by hustling for a better job, but by fighting for an economic system where workers and young people are in control, not the billionaires. We should be the ones who get to decide democratically what kind of jobs society needs and how much we get paid. A socialist society would provide work for youth and unemployed people doing things that are socially useful and ensure everyone has a comfortable, fulfilling life, once we’re no longer exploited for the profits of the warhawk ruling class.