["Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 51, Issue 2, June 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe emergence of large numbers of educated unemployed people across the world remains a major social challenge. Research on unemployed young people has tended to emphasise a lack of agency. Many studies depict jobless youth as aimless and detached from their social and spatial situation. This paper uses an account of the practices of educated unemployed young people in Uttar Pradesh, North India, to challenge this depiction. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2004/2005 and 2022/2023 in Meerut City, by the first author and second author, respectively, the paper documents the capacity of jobless youth to adapt to employment scarcity over the first quarter of the twenty‐first century. In 2004/2005 young people were often involved in cultures of waiting and passing time. Eighteen years later educated unemployed young people were much more focused on preparing for government employment. This adaptation has occurred in part through young people developing so‐called ‘libraries’ across Meerut, which offer spaces in which they can study, socialise and ‘prepare’ (‘taiyari’) for government admissions tests. In documenting a shift in young people's activity and agency, the paper makes three contributions to wider human geographical work. First, it highlights a need to consider how non‐elite sections of society can come to develop social agency over time. Second, the paper illuminates the potential of supplementary educational initiatives to serve as geographies of support. Finally, the paper discusses the value of long‐term research in a single place that can connect social change to shifting strategies on the ground.\n"]