YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT IN: STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES

Many countries have been applying different policy measures in order to solve the problem of high unemployment among young people over the past few years. The European Commission have started to pay more attention to this issue immediately after the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. The Republic of Serbia has been investing significant efforts in the last few years in reducing the number of unemployed young persons by implementing a National Youth Strategy. The paper is focused on the youth unemployment issues with regard to policies implemented within the National Youth Strategy for the period 2015 to 2025. The goal of the paper is to provide summary of the policies for reducing youth unemployment in Serbia. Given the slightly better position of young people in the labour market in the last three years, there are arguments to support the thesis that the last Strategy influenced more favourable position of young people in Serbia. However, youth unemployment is very complex phenomena which reduction could be hardly explained by movement of one or two factors. There are probably several reasons that resulted in lower youth unemployment in Serbia that include economic situation in the EU, general macroeconomic trends, business environment and many others.