Empowering youth for the digital future: World Youth Skills Day 2025

15 July 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of World Youth Skills Day (WYSD), a global milestone celebrating the importance of equipping young people with the skills they need to shape inclusive and sustainable societies. This year’s theme, “Youth empowerment through AI and digital skills,” shines a spotlight on the urgent need to help young people thrive in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and digital technologies. As digitalisation continues to transform how we learn, work, and live, WYSD 2025, also marking the fifth anniversary of the Global Skills Academy, calls attention to both the opportunities and the challenges in ensuring fair and equal access to future-ready skills.

The need to act is clear. While AI is expected to reach a market value of $4.8 trillion by 2033, its benefits remain uneven. For example, only 22% of AI professionals globally are women, and 90% of adolescent girls and young women in low-income countries are still offline. Around 450 million young people, roughly 7 in 10, are economically disengaged because they lack the skills needed to succeed in the labour market. Despite some progress, 54% of countries now have digital skills standards, fewer than 10% of schools and universities offer formal guidance on AI and 86% of students feel unprepared for an AI-powered workplace. With one in five employers expecting AI to reshape their industries by 2030, closing these gaps has never been more urgent*.

This global call to action strongly reflects HADEA’s mission to build a more digitally skilled and resilient Europe. The Digital Skills and Jobs Platform (DSJP), which HADEA manages, serves as a vital resource for accessing tailored training, educational tools, and community knowledge in the evolving digital landscape.

Since its launch in 2021, the DSJP has served as the EU’s central hub for digital skills, bringing together key stakeholder groups into one user-friendly platform. Today, with over 16,000 registered users, the DSJP continues to grow as an active online community for upskilling and reskilling in the digital economy.

The platform offers tailored recommendations to users, helping them find learning and training opportunities that match their individual needs. For example, the Learning Paths section features curated content across ten priority digital areas, including AI, Cybersecurity, Blockchain, Virtual Reality, IoT, Machine Learning, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Web Development. Each path is structured to guide users step-by-step through their learning journey, with digital skills training that span from basic-level courses, ideal for your learners, to advanced content for professionals looking to specialise or reskill in cutting-edge technologies.

The DSJP also hosts the EU Cybersecurity Skills Academy, which aims to bridge the growing skills gap in cybersecurity across Europe. By bringing together various upskilling and reskilling initiatives, the Academy offers a constantly updated directory of cybersecurity education and training. Looking ahead, the platform will also host additional academies focused on Quantum Technologies, Virtual Worlds, and Generative AI.

Finally, the platform also shares inspiring good practices from across Europe, showing how national and regional strategies can support the digital transformation of businesses and education systems. In this effort, the National Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs play a key role in exchanging and promoting successful initiatives across the EU.

*To explore these insights further, consult the World Youth Skills Day 2025 infographic, which compiles key data from UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum.