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Although age is seemingly indifferent to time, it remains a social and state construct. Using age in public policy cannot be reduced to a simple demographic or budgetary measurement. Through its measurements and rankings, age builds social conceptions of population categories and age standards. This article compares the way in which youth employment policies implemented over around fifteen years in various contexts elicit specific conceptions of the age of youth, of its role in the labour market and the economy, and of the ways in which public aid serves young people. The results help identify various mechanisms for regulating the age of youth within programmes designed to train and qualify young people as capital for the economy; or to individually enable young people to be social resources; or to integrate young people as a way of resolving their difficulties, which are seen as an existing challenge for the labour market. The results are based on a documentary analysis (descriptive and semantic) of more than 80 youth employment policies and programmes in Canada, Quebec and France. The documentary analysis is complemented by an interpretative analysis of semi-structured interviews with the coordinators of the key policies in each context. A cognitive approach is used to examine youth employment policies, which are often analysed solely based on descriptions of programmes and social and economic conditions.