Expectations Toward Work of the Unemployed Macedonian Youth

Abstract

The youth unemployment represents a major problem worldwide. One of the reasons is for sure the fact that the world economic crisis has happened in the approximately same time when today’s young workforce got mature and educated enough to enter the world of work. Macedonian youth unemployment rate is 52.9% and it ranks the country on the third place in the world (right after Bosnia and Herzegovina and Greece). Youth unemployment and underemployment in the Macedonia represent a major cost to the country in economic, political and societal terms. One in every two young persons in the national labor force is unemployed. The high youth unemployment rate means a loss of investment in education and training, a reduced tax base and higher social costs, but in the same time it is one of the motives for long-term or permanent migration of the Macedonian young people out from the country in search for a job and better career prospective. Therefore this research paper describes the key obstacles of the Macedonian unemployed youth on their career path in contrary to their expectations from the work/employment. The research results can be considered as new and original, as the data is collected during the period June/July/August/September 2016, both exploratory and descriptive research methods have been used, while the data is analyzed at quantitative and qualitative level.