Impact of education and training systems on the labour market participation of young people in CEE economies: comparison of Poland and Slovenia

The paper examines how various labour market institutions and more specifically how education and employment policies affect the opportunities available for young people to start a job in a transition economy.

The authors explore the main factors determining youth unemployment in Poland and Slovenia, two transition countries that implemented different reform paths to the market system. The labour market status of young people is analyzed comparatively for the two countries.

The findings are:

• though in Slovenia the overall unemployment rate is lower than in Poland, there are only little differences between youth unemployment rates in the two countries
• in Slovenia the unemployment rate of young teenagers is about two times that of the overall level for the country while in Poland young teenagers tend to have a very low probability of being in any kind of employment
• for many workers aged below 35, temporary employment is the only chance for them to be employed - the group of young adults is the most likely to enter long-term unemployment
• both in Poland and Slovenia, the probability of being in education or inactive rather than unemployed increases remarkably over time - self- employment has the potential to bring some of the youngest segments of the population out of unemployment
• young women tend to become more active, though, they are still quite likely to experience employment in temporary jobs or be inactive in comparison to young men, who are favoured in permanent jobs
• people with low education tend to be poor - the relative chance of being employed rather than being unemployed is low only for workers with a university degree