Policy Brief: Youth Unemployment: Do You Have an Attitude Issue?

Youth unemployment is an issue that is very high on the agenda worldwide. Even though it is not specific to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), it appears that young people in this country are faring the worst with 58% of youth unemployed. The predominant view holds that their predicament is exclusively due to the bad economic environment and lack of opportunities, but overlooks the factor of youth’s behaviour and attitude when entering the job market.

Being aware of the multiple layers and numerous factors contributing towards this chronic issue, we have decided to embark on a path of explaining its complexities through a larger project addressing each of the layers separately. Each of the briefs in this series will tackle one specific aspect that contributes to the problem of youth unemployment and how these factors and their interconnection are comprehended by different groups. This brief is the first one in this series, and deals with often overlooked attitudes in the studies of youth unemployment.

The attitudes we are putting forward in this analysis are understood as a “relatively stable overt behaviour of a person which affects his status.”[i] Attitudes are due to their nature near impossible to measure and thus under researched, which does not make them less important; in a capitalist environment of the 21st century, for instance, young workforce should aside from its knowledge and skills also prove its employability through flexible and pro-active attitude or an inclination towards accepting alternatives.

Policy Brief: Youth Unemployment: Do You Have an Attitude Issue? (.pdf) >>>

[i] Bain, Read. 1928. “An Attitude on Attitude Research”, American Journal of Sociology, 33(6): 940–957.