H. RYZHKOVA

PhD, Alfred Nobel University Dnipropetrovs’k, Ukraine

Employment of youth

Youth forms a special sector of labor market, which differs significantly from its other components. On the one hand, a young man is highly mobile, open, ready to changes and search of job, on the other hand – he does not have sufficient experience to be competitive at the labor market. The imperfect juridical base, absence of clear governmental strategy of youth employment, inequality of educational services on staff training to the real demands of economy, absence of employers stimulation to youth employment make the phenomenon of unemployment one of the most critical socio-economic problems of modern Ukraine.

The data of International Labor Organization (ILO) show that the problem of youth employment has grown to the global scale. Despite the gradual renewal of economy, youth unemployment all over the world continues to grow. Many countries, including Ukraine, face this problem. Socio-economic problems of the country, caused by the youth unemployment, lead to anxiety, because they influence the country’s labor potential.

Among the reasons of youth unemployment in Ukraine experts name the problem of education, where one of the main reasons is the outdated approach to students’ education [1]. Exactly the problems, caused by the insufficiency of professional training, are claimed to be the major, which do not favor the quality of graduates and young specialists’ adaptation at labor market. This, in turn, leads to the growth of unemployment. In connection with the decrease of the general level of employment due to crisis phenomena in Ukrainian economy, the problem of youth employment remains urgent.

In the annual ILO report “Global employment tendencies – 2013” it is stated that youth belongs to the group of population, which has been mostly touched by the crisis of workplaces [2].

In the world 73.8 million people aged from 15 to 24, are unemployed, and the slowdown of economic growth has forced another 0.5 million people to fill up this list in 2014. Thus, the level of youth unemployment in the world by 2014 has grown to 12.6% and, as it is forecasted, it will grow to 12.9% by 2017 [2]. In the EU countries the level of youth unemployment in 2014 was 17.9%. The highest level is observed in Greece (49.3%) and Spain (53.8%). The lowest level of unemployment is in the Netherlands (9.7%) and in Germany (7.7%) (pic. 1).

Despite the fact that the level of youth unemployment in Ukraine is rather low (12%), the statistics shows that the problem of employment is still a serious problem. We need to consider the fact that the share of laboring population is only 43% from the total number. In the last decades Ukraine has faced the exceeding of mortality over fertility.

Pic. 1 The level of youth unemployment in Europe, 2014 [2]

This is the reason of the shortening of labor population. Thus, a rather low index only witnesses the hidden deficit of labor potential. And if the country has not faced economic crisis, this index could be much lower.

Nevertheless, the problem of youth employment causes much more concern of many social institutes and, unfortunately, much less – of the government.

Globalization of Ukrainian economy, its ambitions about future entering the EU, put forward additional demands to modernization of national education management. This group of factors includes:

– the growth of necessity of creative highly-qualified managers, analytics, marketers;

– increase of workers mobility;

– increase of demands to the quality of education;

– strengthening of competition at the educational services market;

– expansion of possibilities of getting education.

Today relations between the government, market and educational institutions develop in the conditions of globalization. At the world market of educational services the domination belongs to neoliberal concept, the priority is possessed by humanistic and democratic values. Major directions of changes, which occur, are connected with globalization, competition and social control, the role of government in the higher education reform. All these tendencies should generate new professional standards, which eliminate the lagging of educational system from the market demands.

In the process of examining the reasons of youth unemployment in Ukraine we have defined and thoroughly considered three main aspects:

References

1. Gurtov V.A., Mezencev A.G., Pitukhin E.A. (2003). Modeling needs of the regional economy for graduates of higher professional education. Regionology. № 1-2. - pp. 262-267

2. International Labour Organization, (2015). GLOBAL EMPLOYMENT TRENDS. [online] Available at: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_233953.pdf.