Analysis of Youth Underemployment in Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia

Employment of Economics Graduates: Does Gpa Matter?

“…Between 2010 and 2019, an average of 49,5 % of young people in North Macedonia was unemployed and the gap in unemployment of adults and young people has widened since 2010, while for the same period in Albania an average of 31,5 % of young people was unemployed [11]. Youth are more likely to be unemployed and underemployed because of lack of experience in job searching, less power in wage bargaining, and as a result, they are more likely to accept underpaid jobs that do not match their skills [12]. Analyses of youth transition from school to work in Albania have shown the phenomena of skills mismatch with the labour market positions.…”

Youth underemployment: A review of research on young people and the problems of less(er) employment in an era of mass education

“…Fogg and Harrington (2011) describe this as 'mal-employment', a form of underemployment, where the education level of the work exceeds the education and skill required to undertake the job, which is particular to the 'college labour market'. Petreski et al (2019) infuse further conceptual complexity into this full-time temporality and objective-subjective dichotomy, proposing a conceptualisation of underemployment across the following domains: (1) working less than 35 h per week but wanting to work more; (2) feeling overqualified in current job; (3) feeling insecure;…”

“…Petreski, Tumanoska, Vchkov and Kochovska (2019) infuse further conceptual complexity into this full‐time temporality and objective‐subjective dichotomy, proposing a conceptualisation of underemployment across the following domains: (1) working less than 35 h per week but wanting to work more; (2) feeling overqualified in current job; (3) feeling insecure; (4) earning below ‘reservation wage’; and (4) temporarily employed without a contract. Here, they generate a concept of youth underemployment in relation to a surrogate measure of ‘typical’ full‐time temporality, that is, 35 h of work a week (Aronson et al., 2015; Verbruggen, Emmerik, van, Gils, Meng and de Grip, 2015) but also centres the subjective impressions of young people to their employment.…”

Expectations Set High: Understanding Reservation Wages in North Macedonia

“…It may suggest that many job seekers persistently misjudge their prospects or anchor their reservation wage on their beliefs rather than on the previous wage. The finding may not be surprising for North Macedonia, given the prevalence of underemployment: for instance, Petreski and Davalos (2019) find that 57.1% of youth (15-29) in North Macedonia reported that at least two of the following underemployment conditions on the workplace prevailed: the person worked less than 35 hours per week though wanted to work more, the person had been overqualified, the person expressed insecurity on the job; persons' salary had been below the reservation wage; and the person had temporary or no written contract.…”