Youth employment policies in Serbia: framework, interventions, results

Ognjenović, Kosovka (2012) Youth employment policies in Serbia: framework, interventions, results. In: New challenges in changing labour markets. Institute of Economic Sciences, Belgrade, pp. 59-74. ISBN 978-86-80315-93-5

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Abstract

The aim of this article is to focus on the implementation of youth em‐ ployment policies within the current institutional framework and to analyse the short‐term results of interventions created in order to increase prospects of youth in the labour market of Serbia. There is robust empirical evidence about youth in Serbia as a disadvantaged group in the labour market. Youth unemployment is almost three times higher relative to adult unemployment. In particular, low‐ educated young people and residents of rural areas have less chance to achieve requirements of the modern labour market. The employment prospects of young people in the European Union member countries (especially in EU‐15) are much better than prospects of their counterparts in Serbia. The framework for the im‐ plementation of youth employment policies in Serbia allows to the authorities to interfere in the labour market by using public interventions. A set of instruments and activities are at disposal, but in order to avoid overlapping among competenc‐ es of different institutions, their implementation needs careful coordination and planning. The youths are overrepresented in labour market policy measures aimed at providing services for youth activation, such as searching for jobs in job clubs, trainings for active job searching, carrier guidance and counselling as well as in the especially designed apprenticeship program for fighting against youth unem‐ ployment entitled “First Chance”. In all other interventions, even including the pro‐ grams for entrepreneurship development, the number of young people is un‐ derrepresented. Due to the omitted continuous evaluation results it is not clear to what extent labour market policy measures accurately contribute to the improve‐ ment of youth employment prospects in the labour market of Serbia.

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