President William Ruto gives the thumps up after laying the foundation stone for the Makupa Modern Market and the Affordable Housing Project in Mvita Constituency, May 25, 2026.
Four years after President William Ruto came to power promising to put job creation at the centre of his Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda, unemployment remains one of the biggest challenges facing young Kenyans.
Youth job creation was a core pillar of Kenya Kwanza's economic agenda, which treated youth unemployment as a central crisis and proposed deliberate interventions across several sectors.
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) in 2022 indicated that roughly 3.5 million young people aged 15–35 were idle or facing severe joblessness, with broader composite metrics estimating youth exclusion or joblessness at around 67 per cent.
But despite interventions such as creating opportunities for Kenyan youth to earn from the digital economy through the Kazi Mtandaoni programme and providing startup capital through the Hustler Fund, the jobs crisis persists.
Recent labour and socioeconomic surveys show a persistent crisis, with general youth unemployment of Kenyans aged 15–34 hovering between 53 and 65 per cent, compared with an overall national unemployment rate of 12.7 per cent.
Not even the ambitious Affordable Housing Programme, touted as having generated hundreds of thousands of construction-related jobs for young people; the Kazi Majuu overseas labour export programme; or efforts to modernise agriculture through aggregation and industrial parks for youth to engage in agribusiness and manufacturing value chains seem to have made a significant difference.
While marginal improvements or job creation have been claimed in official tallies, millions of young graduates continue to face high vulnerability due to a saturated formal labour market and heavy reliance on unsecured informal work.
FKE data shows that roughly 50,000 students in Africa's population of almost 200 million people aged between 15 and 24 graduate from universities annually, with fewer than 40 per cent securing an immediate and smooth transition into the workforce.
Whereas FKE this is a continental outlook, 15–34-year-olds, who form 35 per cent of Kenya's population, have the highest unemployment rates.
"Over one million young people enter the labour market annually without any skills, some having either dropped out of school or completed school and not enrolled in any college," FKE said.
Data shows that among university graduates, at least 60 per cent struggle to transition into the labour market immediately, further compounding the problem.
Take teaching, for instance. The Kenya Kwanza government said it employed 100,000 teachers within three years from September 2022, with the figure projected to hit 116,000 by January 2027.
On the other hand, Kenya churns out more than 30,000 to 40,000 new teacher graduates annually from universities and diploma teacher training colleges (TTCs).
Between 2022 and 2026, this cumulative output has added well over 150,000 newly trained educators to a massive pool of more than 340,000 registered but unemployed teachers nationwide.
A comparison of figures in this one sector alone offers an indication of how difficult the situation could become in the coming years, as the number of annual graduates continues to heavily outpace available formal employment opportunities.
Whereas state-sponsored temporary employment programmes such as Kazi Mtaani, which has since been rebranded as the Climate Worx Programme with a Sh5 billion allocation targeting more than 110,000 youth across multiple counties, have provided employment, the jobs have historically offered low-wage, seasonal labour with no social protections.
Research from the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies (CHRIPS) notes that these short-term, low-paying interventions fail to offer sustainable pathways to formal, pensionable careers, leaving many young people trapped in a cycle of "disguised unemployment" or working poverty.
Another report by the United States International University notes that more than 80 per cent of jobs created in Kenya are in the informal sector.
Young workers frequently take these temporary positions out of desperation, but the low pay prevents them from achieving financial independence.
"Indeed, discouragement and dissatisfaction, especially among youth, have the potential of increasing the risk of social discontent to levels capable of leading to uprisings such as those seen during the 'Arab Spring'," a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) notes.
This discontent came to the fore during the 2024 Gen Z uprising, the persistent demonstrations by intern teachers and doctors, as well as the growing involvement of youth in violence during political rallies, allegedly after being given handouts.
"In addition, there is some evidence that youth are on average less efficient in searching for a job," the ILO report warns, noting that the pace of recovery for youth employment is expected to be slower than that of adults.
It adds that in Kenya, significant research has been carried out on youth unemployment to analyse its trends and consequences, but little attention has been paid to the factors that drive youth unemployment and inactivity.
Other studies on labour economics in East Africa show a complex paradox — skills mismatch.
There is a vast disconnect between theoretical university curricula and the practical and technical skills demanded by employers.
A November 2023 Skills Needs Survey Report by FKE revealed that 521 enterprises across diverse sectors raised concerns about the skills gap.
"As such, many employers report difficulties finding suitably skilled workers, even though the unemployment rate is high," FKE CEO Jacqueline Mugo said.
The survey, designed to capture changing demands for skills, provided insights into the dynamic nature of the Kenyan job market.
"With technological changes, the labour market dynamics are evolving faster than ever and the mismatch between workers' skills and those required by available jobs has become a top priority policy concern," Mugo added.
The survey showed that the predominant educational qualifications sought by enterprises were undergraduate degrees (43.8 per cent), followed by Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) qualifications (34.9 per cent).
The top TVET skills in demand were transport and logistics (21.3 per cent), electrical (21.1 per cent), and building and construction (18.2 per cent).
Within the engineering sector, computer and software engineering (30.7 per cent) led the list, followed by electrical and electronics engineering (27.4 per cent) and mechanical and production engineering (25 per cent).
The survey highlighted that 20 per cent of enterprises faced hard-to-fill vacancies, leading some to employ applicants with qualifications below their initial requirements (9.6 per cent).
Industries such as manufacturing reported the highest difficulty in filling positions.
The report noted that 73.1 per cent of the studied enterprises resorted to in-house training to bridge the skills gap, often in collaboration with other organisations in the capacity-building space, FKE said.
Speaking most recently on July 15 during the Skill Up Africa Summit 2026, Mugo said skills are the foundation of opportunity and the engine that will drive Kenya's economic transformation.
“We often struggle to find talent, and the young people are struggling to find jobs. So where is the disconnect? Do we want a workplace driven by a skilled, innovative and adaptable workforce or not? The answer to these questions lies in one word: skills,” Mugo said.
The skills mismatch is also emerging as a future problem as young people move through the education system and into the labour market.
In the 2026–27 universities and colleges admission cycle, the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) placed 293,869 students in degree programmes, Level 6 diploma courses, Level 5 craft certificate courses and Level 4 artisan certificate programmes across universities and other tertiary institutions.
The majority, 202,133, were admitted to degree programmes, while 8,915 opted to pursue non-degree courses.
"We recognise that some eligible students did not apply for placement because they may have opted to pursue alternative pathways to higher education and training," Education CS Julius Ogamba said.
He said some may have joined the disciplined forces, enrolled in overseas training or taken up self-sponsored programmes in universities and colleges that did not go through the KUCCPS portal.
The numbers underline the scale of the challenge facing the government: thousands of young people continue to enter universities and colleges every year, while employers say they struggle to find workers with the skills they need.
For many young Kenyans, therefore, the question is no longer simply whether they can find work, but whether they possess the requisite skills for the limited opportunities the economy is creating to absorb them on sustainable terms.
