The first National Stakeholder Meeting (NSC) took place in the Czech Republic 18 December 2015. In the first part of the NSC meeting meeting the participants have discussed the work packages, the outputs up to date and planned research activities. All of them were assessed as interesting. After, three main topics were discussed.
How are young people disadvantaged in the labour market, specifically in the Czech Republic
Basically, in Europe, young people are disproportionally disadvantaged in the labour markets. Lack of human and social capital and lack practical experiences play a role. Their disadvantage in enormous in more segmented labour markets. Czech Republic is currently on the 2nd place in Europe regarding overall unemployment rate and 5th place regarding youth unemployment. Still, their unemployment rate is 2-3 times higher compared to the other groups. On the other hand, it seems that school graduates are not so much disadvantaged (except some study branches), practical experience shows that employers are willing to hire young people, even in case they do not have practical experiences. Some categories of youth are, however, in great disadvantage, in particular those who lack education. The most disadvantaged are drop-outs. Overlap with other handicaps plays also a role: young Roma mostly are not hired by employers in regular indeterminate contracts, similarly women with small children, disabled people face problems in access to jobs.
A specific problem is that qualification of young people is not often used effectively in the Czech economy. Czech employers are not involved and interested in providing job experience to young people and educate them on the jobs.
Need and impacts of the policies aiming at labour market integration of the youth
Youth Guarantee scheme stimulated by the EU strategy is not a new instrument in the Czech republic: until 2000s, there were so called assistant jobs schemes used for providing job experience to the youth, quite successful. Recently, there were ESF funded schemes of job experience implemented in great extent, although may be, some other disadvantaged groups need them more than young people. What is however, lacking, is the capacity of job mediators and counsellors (overload) to work more intensively with young people.
Another problem which is emerging is rather poor targeting of the measures: this implies that the studies analysing net effects of the measures indicate rather low value added in terms of unemployment outflows. And finally, there is little possibility of transcending from unemployment back to the educational system, especially in case of low educated.
How best prepare and conduct interviews in WP4
The topics planned for the interviews seem to be quite interesting, including examination of scarring effects. Informants should be identified of different profile, either with experience of unemployment or precarious employment, low paid.
A specific problem is that interviewees of the cohort 1950-55 already retired, really long retrospective, validity problem. And second, until prime employment age, they lived in command economy, no experience of unemployment.