YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

Employment and entrepreneurship  123 Figure 3.1 also shows the cyclical nature of the labour market, in which young people are hit relatively harder by economic crises (they also find jobs more quickly during economic recoveries; Makeham, 1980; O’Hig- gins, 2001), and that youth unemployment in Slovenia has consistently been below the European (EU-27) average. In 2018-2020, survey unemployment among young people (15-24) in Slovenia reached its lowest level in 25 years (2019: 8.1%), but is still significantly higher than the overall unemployment rate (4.2%). This reflects the age segmentation of the labour market. The relatively less favourable position of young people in the market can also be inferred from the data on the forms of work themselves. Not only are young people outperforming in terms of atypical jobs, but it can be ar- gued that part of the improvement in the post-financial crisis period 2008/2009 is linked to the increase in non-standard/atypical jobs (e.g. part-time, temporary, shift work, Sunday work, agency work), which are becoming an increasingly common formof work. For example, the share of temporary (i.e. fixed-term) employment in Slovenia reached a record high of 75.5% in 2015. And while it is encouraging that this share has fallen to 62% in 2019, this is still twice as high as in 1996, when the first comparable measurement was made (Figure 3.2).