The Yem are an ethnic group living in south-western Ethiopia.

The neighbors of the Yem include the Gurage, Hadya, and Kembata to the east across the Omo River and the Jimma Oromo to the south, north and west.

The first reference to Yem as a political unit is found, under the name of Jangero, in the victory song of King Yeshaq I (1412-1427) of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, as paying tribute in the form of horses to the king.

[3] The report of the Central Statistical Office gives the 1984 census figures of the Yem people as 34,951 (Central Statistical Office 1991:61), but this census seems to comprise only the Fofa area.

[5] The more recent 2007 national census reports that 160,447 were identified as Yem, of whom 84,607 lived in the Oromia Region and 74,906 in the SNNPR.