The article deals with the problems of young people as one of the most vulnerable categories of the population in the Ukrainian labor market. Transferring young people from education to the labor market involves a number of difficult stages: the formation of personality; finding yourself and your place in life; obtaining general knowledge in school and other educational institutions; acquisition of social communication skills and experience; the first attempts to create your own family, etc. The asymmetries currently prevailing in the Ukrainian labor market significantly exacerbate the problem of employment in general and among young people in particular due to obstacles such as lack of experience and skills of professional adaptation, social immaturity and insecurity, mismatch of the first job level and quality of professional knowledge, the inconsistency of the first requests with real professional responsibilities, etc. All this significantly increases tensions in the labor market in the youth segment, which is an open, mobile, active, focused, progressive resource that learns quickly and easily adapts to change. The current segment of youth employment in Ukraine is primarily characterized by: low level of economic activity of the youngest age group; high unemployment, which decreases in older age groups of young people; structural imbalance between labor supply and demand; a significant level of informal employment, etc. According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, in 2018 the level of economic activity among people aged 30-34 was 83.3%, aged 25-29 - 79.6% and was higher than the average among the population aged 15 - 70 years (62.6%). At the same time, among people aged 15-24, this figure was only 33.7% (in comparison, in the EU-28 the level of economic activity of young people aged 15-24 in 2018 was 41.7%). Maintaining a low level of economic activity of the younger generation in the labor market is a consequence of a combination of the productive sector development problems of the Ukrainian economy and the specifics of the youth segment of the labor market, in particular: limited employment opportunities, lack of professional knowledge, slow development of youth entrepreneurship, low effectiveness of mechanisms to stimulate youth involvement in labor activity. Implementing an active youth employment policy using transparent and effective mechanisms to encourage employers to hire young people, motivate young people to work and overcome stereotypes of employers about their low professionalism should become a priority of public policy in the near future. Keywords: youth, youth labor market, employment, economic activity, labor force, labor resources, state regulation, unemployment.
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