YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

Employment and entrepreneurship  133 Data from 2020 show that concerns about unemployment have slightly decreased compared to 2018 – the share of young people who are not concerned about employment has increased significantly (from 19.2% to 39.6%), with the increase in optimism coming from those that were pre- viously undecided. In other words, young people seem to be polarised in terms of their perception of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ when it comes to the fear of unemployment. This reflects their relatively good understanding of the situation and changes in the labour market. While new econo- mies/technologies are opening up unprecedented opportunities for some, competition, and insecurity are intensifying for others, who are facing an erosion of economic, social, and legal security. Fear of unem- ployment is higher (p < 0.01) among young women (54% of women re- port moderate to strong fear of unemployment, while “only” 29.3% of men feel alike). The Covid-19 epidemic is likely to reinforce this aspect of insecurity. Fear of unemployment has stabilised, but is still significantly higher than in 2010, when labour market conditions were much worse. In addition, there is a peculiar polarisation, reflecting the segregation of the labour market into “winners” and “losers”. Fear of unemployment is higher among young women (54% of women report a moderate to strong fear of unemployment, while “only” 29.3% of men feel the same). The fear of some (especially women) is quite justified in light of the po- larisation of the labour market and the fact that the OECD report shows that Slovenia has the second-highest share of jobs that could become ful- ly automated among the 32 OECDmember states. Moreover, the reasons for this fear are also to be found in the fact that employment is signifi- cantly tied to networks of strong and (mainly) weak connections (Gran- ovetter, 1973). Young people are apparently well aware of the fact that these connections (and access to them) are unevenly distributed.