What is your long-term top talent recruitment strategy? Are you building an organization with a big goal, where young people eager to join and stay. If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.
Statistics telling us that by the year of 2035, working age people will comprise 64,7% of the total population of Mongolia. Youth born after the 2017 will start joining the labor market. Many Asian countries, notably South Korea and Japan are dreaming of such population.
Let’s look at the “demographic window1” numbers closely. According to the Mongolian population census, in 2025 there were 452,890 youth aged 20-29. This number is estimated to grow to 657,203 by the year of 2035.
You might think, what is the significance of that, we have high number of youth today, but we are still having a difficulty to find the right candidate with sufficient soft skills. Good news is that new generation is likely to have better soft skills and technological skills compared to the current working age population, as they have more enabling environment to develop relevant skills both inside and outside the classroom. Private secondary schools have started to focus more on soft skills aspect. Not only private schools, with the support of international fundings project-based learning method, where children improve their soft skills while working on a team project, is being implemented even at the soum level public schools.
Each year 15,000-25,000 secondary school graduates are choosing to study abroad exposing themselves further to the world class education and opportunities. Many choose to stay in the respective countries after their graduation. On the other hand, with the rising global tension and uncertainty, a good many from the current Mongolian diaspora are choosing to return to be part of a bigger cause in the home country.
With stable GDP projection, the labor demand in finance, insurance, professional scientific and technical services are estimated to grow. These sectors demand employees with higher education degree. Consequently, it is the time, like our Mongolian idiom says, “to prepare the bucket before preparing the milk”.
To be better prepared for the future, we should analyze today’s labor market condition. Many employers are struggling to keep the young generation in the workplace. The study on the youth employability landscape in Mongolia sheds light on some of the reasons behind it:
– Employer’s constant request to work overtime
– Job-title based salary scale
– Female youth face double disadvantage, lower salary than men, questions about family planning during the interview, workplace harassment among others.
1 High number of working age people and low number of pensioners in the year of 2020-2040.
To attract and keep the highly educated youth in the workplace, we have to tackle these existing human resource practices. We are emphasizing the following two points:
Organizational HR policy
Bottom-up approach can make a significant impact. Apart from following and ensuring compliance with the labor law clauses related to female employees, business and employers’ can have a HR policy that increases their female employer’s retention rate. I can tell this from my personal experience of benefiting from such policy both financially and emotionally. I have worked in an international organization operating in Mongolia for many years. It had policy to provide two months of paid maternal leave after the employer gives birth. Two months of full salary aside the social insurance allowance was a great financial support for a young family. It was a big stimulus for women to join and remain in the organization up to six years.
Data driven decision
We are all aware that data driven decision is indispensable part of our daily work in this AI era. However, it was questionable, if there are systems for human resources and executives to make a sound data driven decision. Lambda Global is developing an AI driven system to enhance the human resources efficiency. It has started an initiative to be not only an AI driven new generation talent connection, but also a leader in the sector to shape a transparent and fair labor ecosystem in Mongolia.
As mentioned above, one of the major issues youth are facing is a fair salary. Lambda.Global is trying to address this matter by introducing a transparent and reliable salary information resource. It produces a salary report of each sector based on multiple information resources, including the real market information.
The salary report provides:
- Insight to the average and highest salary
- Top five positions
- Workforce demand
- Where the skills mismatch is lying
- Global trends
- Actionable insights for employer’s and employees.
By joining the Lambda Global, organizations can greatly benefit and together create a fair labor ecosystem, that could address many of the labor market pitfalls.
Top talents shape the modern-day economy, country’s development, business competitiveness and innovation speed. We, Mongolians are rich with rising young population. Hence, every organization has the opportunity to leverage this potential and aspire to the greater goal.
References:
1. Entrepreneurship-focused Socio-Emotional Skills For The Most Vulnerable Youth In Rural Mongolia project, Save the Children Mongolia, 2025,
2. Labor Market Of Mongolia: Mid-Term Demand and Supply Forecasting Study Report, the Ministry Of Labour and Social Protection, Research Institute Of Labour And Social Protection, MMCG,2024 3. Mongolia Economic Update, the World Bank, 2026
4. Population of Mongolia, National Statistics Office of Mongolia, 2025
5. Sector Salary report, Lambda Global,2025
6. Skills demand in Mongolia: Main Findings of the Skills Module of the Barometer Survey, the World Bank, 2022
7. Youth Employment Forum highlights, Unread, Asian Development Bank, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, 2025
8. Youth Employability Landscape Study of Mongolia, the Lorinet Foundation, 2022.
