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Good Morning! Mongolia’s new academic year begins tomorrow, with more than 800,000 children returning to schools across the country. Goodbye summer, hello early mornings, homework and the familiar joy of going back to school. 🚌🎒

What’s inside today’s edition…

• 🥤 Sugar Tax Is Coming

• 💔 77,700 Youth Are Left Out

• 🇲🇳 Mongolia at 28.8: Time Is Running

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get moving. 🐐

MARKET

MNG: Mongolia to tax all sugary drinks starting 2027.  

MSE: Last Thursday,  August 27, Khan Bank (KHAN) shares hit a record ₮1,624, pushing the bank’s market capitalization above ₮3 trillion for the first time and setting a new record on Mongolia’s stock market.

FRC: Mongolia’s Financial Regulatory Commission and Toronto Centre agreed to strengthen financial supervision through training, capacity building and international best practices.

💔 NEET: 77,700 Young Mongolians Are Neither Working Nor Studying 

Mongolia's labor market headline numbers all moved in the right direction, according to the latest census. Employment rose to 59%, unemployment fell from 9.9% in 2020 to 5.5%, and the number of jobless dropped from 129,000 to 79,000 over the same period. On the surface, it reads like a success story, but not underneath.

⚠️ An Open Window, an Idle Resource

In 2025, 77,700 young people aged 15-24 were not in employment, education or training, the NEET group,  making up 16.4% of that age bracket, or 1 in 6. The most troubling part is that the share rose 4.2 percentage points from 2020.

• 🤔 Why is This Strange? Because Mongolia is right now in its demographic window. People aged 15–24 make up 20.8% of the working-age population, a historic high in labor-force potential. In theory, this is the golden era for economic growth. Yet at that very moment, the country is failing to use 1 in 6 of its young people.

Unemployment and NEET moving in opposite directions reveals an important distinction. NEET youth aren't counted as "unemployed and job-seeking", they've dropped entirely out of the labor market, a hidden group. Their rising number is a warning that the fall in unemployment may not be fully real.

👩 The Gender Twist: Educated but Sidelined

The deepest fracture hides inside the NEET structure, and the male and female versions are entirely different problems.

• 👩🏻‍🦰 12% of female NEET youth hold higher education, versus just 5.9% of males, twice as many university-educated women are sitting idle.

• 🤵‍♂️ Men skew toward basic education (25.4% vs 17.5%), they left school early and drifted out of the market.

👀 Women's NEET is Wasted Talent 

University graduates unable to convert their education into work, often tied to childcare, marriage, or a shortage of jobs matching their qualifications. The labor-force participation of women aged 20-24 sits 12.6 points below men's, partly because more women are still enrolled in higher education, but the high share of educated female NEET shows the gap is more than just study.

Finally… Mongolia's 5.5% unemployment rate looks like a win. But it only counts those still job hunting. A rising 16.4% of youth have dropped out of work and school altogether, a hidden slack the headline number misses. The demographic window is open now, with aging underway, it won't stay open long.

⭐ Selected for you

ECONOMY & BUSINESS

• Russia’s Pokrovsky Carbon Polygon Ready to Transfer Technologies to Mongolia. (ANN)

• China Baoli to Raise $7.7M Via Share Issue for Mongolia Mining Projects. (DealRoom)

• Jade Gas Submits TTCBM Development Plan in Mongolia. (YahooFinance)

• Mongolia Will Fully Meet Its Domestic Demand For Wheat And Potatoes From This Year’s Harvest, While Around 70% Of Its Vegetable Needs Will Be Supplied Domestically. (LemonPress)

• Loro Piana Eyes Expansion Of Mongolia’s “Resilient Threads” Cashmere Program. (LemonPress)

• Visa Appoints 20-Year Veteran as Korea, Mongolia Chief. (TheKoreaHerald)

• Signed! BYD Battery and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Reach Strategic Cooperation. (Gasgoo)

POLITICS

• Mongolia’s Khurelsukh Heads To SCO Summit In Bishkek. (PresidentOffice)

• United Nations Talks in Mongolia Expose Growing Drought Crisis as Climate Impacts Worsen. (WtopNews) 

• Mongolia Targets 53% Clean Energy by 2050, Up from Just 7.2% Today. (MinistryofEnergy)

• Students Face Out-of-Pocket Costs Amid ELF Funding Shortfall. (UBPost)

• China-Mongolia Mineral Ties Pose Risk to South Korea Diversification. (UPI)

• Mongolia’s Human Rights in 2025: Procedural Gains, Independence & Civil Liberties at Risk. (WorldJusticeProject)

• Construction of Second China-Mongolia Cross-Border Railway Passes 50% Mark, on Track for 2027 Completion. (GlobalTimes)

CULTURE & LIFESTYLE

• Is Ulaanbaatar Worth Visiting? What to Do in Mongolia’s Capital – and Beyond. (SCMP)

• “Heritage is Something Alive”: Ganzorig Miimaa Reimagines Mongolia Through Photography. (Novastan)

🇲🇳 Mongolia at 28.8: Still Young, But the Clock Has Started

The median age of Mongolia's population reached 28.8 years in 2025, according to the National Statistics Office's interim census, meaning half the country is younger, half older.

🚨 One Number Jumped When No One Was Looking

By global standards, Mongolia remains young. Japan sits near 50, the EU around 44, the US about 38. Mongolia even lands just below the world median of roughly 31, though still far above the world's youngest, like Niger and DR Congo, which sit near 15-17. But that reassuring picture only holds on the surface. While the median age crept up slowly, from 27.9 in 2020, a second indicator moved sharply.

• 🧓 The aging index, people aged over 65 per 100 children under 15, leapt to 18.6 from 13.1 in just 5 years, a 42% rise. For the previous 3 decades it had barely budged, even dipping slightly between 2010 and 2020.

🔍 Why the 2 Numbers Disagree?

The median age moves slowly because it's anchored by Mongolia's large working-age population. The aging index compares only the 2 ends, the youngest and the oldest, so it reacts fast to change at the base of the pyramid. 2 forces are pushing it up at once:

• 👵 The Top is Expanding: Large cohorts born in the high-fertility socialist era of the 1960s-1970s are now entering the 65+ bracket.

• 👶 The Base is Shrinking: Fertility has fallen to 2.4 children per woman, down from 3.0 in 2020. With more elderly and fewer children, the ratio climbs quickly.

⏳ The Demographic Window is Closing!

The signs are lining up. The under-14 share has fallen to 30.6%, down from 41.9% in 1989, the working-age share slipped to 63.7% from 64.4%, and pension recipients jumped to 378,000 from 236,000 in 5 years. Mongolia's demographic dividend, the era when workers dominate,  has begun to narrow.

• ⏰ The Point Isn't the Level. It's the Speed: Mongolia isn't in the aging club yet, it's decades younger than Japan or Europe. But its median age has climbed nearly ten years since 1989, and it's clearly on the same path those economies walked earlier.

The real message… 28.8 is less a snapshot of youth than a preview of what's coming. The pressure on pensions, healthcare and elderly care could build faster than the headline number suggests, leaving a limited, but still open, window for policymakers to prepare.

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Publisher: Ts.Ankhbayar
Writer: M.Khulan
Graphics by: Ts.Tselmeg

Disclaimer: The information Inside Mongolia provides is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be or constitute financial advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The decision whether to consider the information we provide is solely our readers' independent decision.