France's Protests Started in High Schools. Its Youth Jobless Rate Is Double America's.

France's unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds is 18.9%. In the United States it's 9.3%; across the Rhine in Germany, 6.9%. A young French person looking for work is twice as likely to come up empty as an American, and 2.7 times as likely as a German.

On October 17, marches were held in about 110 French cities. The Interior Ministry counted 550,000 people, 110,000 of them in Paris; the CGT union said 800,000. The movement wasn't started by unions or parties. It started on September 21 with students at the Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry high school in Créteil, a suburb southeast of Paris.

This piece compares youth unemployment and employment rates for 52 of the 53 countries WhatsThePop tracks, using the ILO modeled estimates for 2025 published by the World Bank. Andorra has no figure and is left out. National statistics offices may publish slightly different numbers. Protest turnout is given as both the government and organizer counts, since they differ widely.

The students' first demands weren't about jobs. The week after a September 17 teachers' strike, Créteil pupils protested unfilled teaching posts, overcrowded classes, and rooms short of desks. When the high school union USL called a national day of action for September 29, it listed four grievances: too few teachers and staff, run-down buildings, overloaded timetables, and the stress of Parcoursup, the national platform French students use to apply to university.

It spread fast. On October 1 the Interior Ministry said 1,027 high schools were affected, 222 blockaded, and 1,949 people arrested in a single day. By October 13 the counts had split by nearly a factor of three: 161,500 marchers according to the ministry, 480,000 according to the youth union coalition. The government began sending 3,000 substitute teachers to the hardest-hit schools that day.

October 17 changed the movement's character. Fuel-price protests that had been running since mid-September joined in, along with unions, former Yellow Vest protesters, teachers, nurses, and firefighters. Diesel had passed €2.37 a liter, a cent below its record. In Marseille, protesters broke into the town hall and looted shops.

Arrest figures depend on who's counting. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez put the day's arrests at about 400; Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu later said 1,200 people were arrested and 150 police officers hurt. As of October 18, the gap between the two numbers hadn't been explained.

At 18.9%, France ranks 16th highest of 52. Six of the 15 above it are in Europe. Southern Europe clusters in the 20s — Spain at 24.7%, Greece 21.4%, Italy 20.5%, Portugal 20.2% — and France sits just below them. Jordan (38.9%) and Tunisia (38.1%) top the list.

Sweden's 24.3% is the number most likely to mislead. Sweden counts many full-time students who are also job-hunting as unemployed, which pushes its youth rate up. At the other end are Germany (6.9%), the Netherlands (8.8%), and Japan (3.9%). Germany and the Netherlands are often cited for apprenticeship systems that tie schools to employers and get young people into work early. The U.S., at 9.3%, lands in the lower half.

One ratio is worth noticing. France's youth rate is about 2.5 times its overall unemployment rate of 7.5%. South Korea, Greece, and Tunisia sit at roughly the same 2.5, and the U.S. at about 2.2. Young people being out of work about two and a half times as often as everyone else is common. France's youth number is high mostly because its overall rate, 7.5%, is double Germany's 3.7%.

South Korea's youth unemployment rate is 6.7%, about a third of France's. But look at the share of 15- to 24-year-olds who actually have a job — the youth employment rate — and the order flips: 24.1% in South Korea, 34.5% in France. More young French people are working.

The unemployment rate only counts people who are looking for work and can't find it. Students, conscripts, and young people studying full-time for civil-service exams drop out of the denominator entirely. In South Korea all three keep large numbers of under-25s outside the labor market, so a low jobless rate sits alongside few young people at work.

By this measure, South Korea looks like Spain (25.4%) and Italy (19.6%). The Netherlands, at 75.9%, and Germany, at 50.9%, are at the other end, with the U.S. at 46.1%. A youth jobless rate alone can't tell you whose young people are worse off.

France's median age is 42.3, the 14th highest of the 53 countries tracked. That's older than the U.S. (38.9) and nowhere near genuinely young countries like Egypt (25.3) or Jordan (24.5). A youth bulge doesn't explain the size of these marches.

A closer clue is the share of 15- to 24-year-olds who are neither in school nor working — the NEET rate. France's is 11.0%, above Germany's 8.2% and even above Spain (9.4%) and Italy (9.9%), where youth unemployment is higher. The U.S. is at 11.6% and the U.K. at 14.4%.

What the high schoolers protested first was missing teachers and crumbling classrooms. But the labor market waiting outside those classrooms — where roughly one in five young job-seekers can't find work — helps explain why adults angry about fuel and living costs joined them so readily.

For median age and population structure, see our report on South Korea overtaking Japan as the oldest society by 2050; for France's immigrant share (13.8%), see our report on immigrants by country. The country pages below compare each nation's population, income, and prices side by side.

Youth labor figures are ILO modeled estimates for 2025 published by the World Bank (retrieved October 2026); median ages come from the WhatsThePop country dataset. Protest figures reflect reporting through October 18 and may change.