YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  45 Figure 1.5: Youth issues and fears, 2000-2020. Here are some issues facing youth. Rate each issue on how much it is true for you, personally. Is it not true at all for you, not true, neither true nor false, true, or very true. 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.5 3.0 4.0 4.5 5.0 2020 Loneliness 2.14 2.09 2.73 I am afraid of not being able to get a job 2.85 2.52 2.99 Fearing loss of employment 2.78 2.79 3.01 The housing issue 2.90 2.74 3.16 Fearing not being successful in school or at work Fearing humanity is irreversibly damaging the environment Lack of money 2.68 3.09 2.72 3.17 3.25 3.33 3.42 2010 2000 1.0 Sources: Mladina 2000, Mladina 2010, Mladina 2020. Note: The perceived importance of an individual youth issue was measured with a 5-degree scale (1 – highly disagree; 5 – highly agree). How can these salient and negative shifts be explained? On the one hand, it is highly unusual and worrying that, even after almost half a decade of robust economic growth, today’s young people are even more worried about being employed, job loss, a lack of money, and housing access. Eco- nomic growth created many new economic opportunities. This can be seen in how low current youth unemployment in Slovenia is. In recent years, it has been hovering under 10% (8.8% in 2018, 9.1% in 2019), which is lower than it has ever been since the establishment of independent Slo- venia (World Bank data). But on the other hand, increasing youth worries are really not all that surprising. There are at least three reasons for this.