Youth unemployment remains a persistent labour market issue in the Philippines despite periods of economic expansion and continued government efforts to improve employment opportunities. At the same time, public debt has become an important source of fiscal financing to support infrastructure development, social programmes, education, and other productive government activities. However, the extent to which public borrowing contributes to better employment outcomes among young people remains insufficiently understood. This study examines whether public debt can reduce youth unemployment in the Philippines by assessing the short-run and long-run relationship between government indebtedness and youth labour market conditions. Annual time-series data are employed to capture the dynamic interaction between public debt and youth unemployment within the Philippine economy. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach is applied to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship and to estimate the adjustment process following short-run economic changes. The analysis considers relevant macroeconomic factors that may influence youth employment conditions to provide a more comprehensive estimation of the debt–unemployment relationship. The findings are expected to provide empirical evidence on the role of public debt in shaping youth unemployment in the Philippines and contribute to the limited literature connecting sovereign debt with age-specific labour market outcomes. The study also offers policy implications for fiscal management by emphasising the importance of productive debt utilisation and employment-oriented public expenditure in addressing youth unemployment.