Youth Labour Market in Central and Eastern Europe

Getting a foothold in the labour market (LM) represents a significant shift in young adulthood – labour market entry process affects further careers and tends to relate closely to transitions in other life domains (Kieselbach et al. 2001). However, life course is not anymore a predetermined sequence of first leaving school and then entering work, but rather a series of different activities where youth is growingly exposed to the phases of unemployment or jobs with precarious contract conditions which call for a dynamic view. Previous literature, focusing mostly on school-to-work transition in the Western societies, has established that individual agency is shaped by various institutional factors (Breen 2005): (1) education system, which determines the link and the pathways between the education system and the labour market; (2) the employment systems (employment protection), which shape the contractual possibilities of the youth entering labour market; and (3) the employment policies, which define and shape the possibilities to (re-)enter labour market through

various measures, programmes, subsidies, trainings or benefits targeted at youth. The current chapter aims at providing a comprehensive review of the youth labour market issues specific to countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The first part of the chapter presents an analytical framework how institutions frame the transitions outlining also transition regimes. Thereafter, it provides an overview of existing institutions relevant for youth labour markets and their variation across the CEE

countries. In the second part, we offer a descriptive analysis of the microdata from the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) datasets, both with time dynamics and in comparison with selected EU benchmark countries – Finland, Austria, the UK and Italy – representing different transition regimes. In particular, we focus on labour market transitions of youth with different educational resources.