The Middle East and North Africa is at a critical juncture. The region has the highest youth unemployment rates in the world as a result of several factors, including institutional rigidities, education systems that fail to provide flexible skills that are needed in the global economy, and a demographic “youth bulge” that has increased supply pressures on the education systems, labor markets and housing markets of the region. After decades of social, economic, and political exclusion, young people across the region have been at the forefront of the social unrest taking place over the past two years. This paper will examine the conditions of MENA youth on eve of the Arab Spring. Recently, several micro data sets have become available that better allow researchers to understand the socio-economic situation of Arab youth in 2010 and early 2011 as the Arab Spring began unfolding. Specifically, this paper will use youth surveys from Morocco and Tunisia, and labor force surveys from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia to explore the lives of young people in countries that have experienced revolution (Egypt and Tunisia) and from those that have not (Jordan and Morocco). The primary focus of this paper will be labor market outcomes of youth. Using labor force surveys, this study will discuss employment outcomes for young workers compared to outcomes for older workers. One preliminary finding is the following: While the Tunisian economy was improving in the years leading up the Arab Spring, that labor market outcomes for young people were worsening. Unemployment rates for those under the age of 30 were increasing even though unemployment rates were falling for older workers. By 2010 unemployment rates for 15-29 year olds were four times higher than those for workers aged 30-64 and this ratio was even higher when comparing those workers with college degrees. This paper will use youth surveys to analyze the transition from schooling to work. This transition can take as long as 2-3 years for college graduates who often queue for the ‘right’ jobs. Thus, Arab youth were under severe economic challenges in 2010 and 2011. However, this paper finds that the socio-economic conditions for youth were similar between countries that experienced revolutions and those that did not, implying that explanations for the causes of the revolutions must lie elsewhere.