Youth Guarantee country by country

Slovenia
October 2020
 Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion
The Youth Guarantee country by country - Slovenia

Table of contents
Introduction and context .................................................................................... 3
Commission's assessment .................................................................................. 4
EMCO's assessment ........................................................................................... 5
Youth Guarantee monitoring – Key data ............................................................... 6
Previous year .................................................................................................... 8
Links to further information ................................................................................ 9

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The Youth Guarantee country by country - Slovenia

Introduction and context

The Youth Guarantee has become a reality across the EU. It has facilitated structural
reforms and innovation in policy design across EU Member States.

This document provides extracts from official Commission documents on the

implementation of the Youth Guarantee in Slovenia. It contains extracts from:

 The country report drawn by the Commission for Slovenia in the context of the
European Semester;
 The conclusions of the thematic multilateral surveillance review of the
Employment Committee (EMCO).
 Results from the data collection on Youth Guarantee schemes.

A section at the end of the document is devoted to the assessment made by the
Commission the previous year.

Slovenia presented a Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan in January 2014. In May

2016, a new YGIP for 2016-2020 was adopted.

Slovenia is eligible for the Youth Employment Initiative.

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The Youth Guarantee country by country - Slovenia

Commission's assessment

From the 2020 country report (EN - SI):

“The labour market continues to record improvements, in line with economic

growth. The employment rate continued to increase accompanied by a decline in the
unemployment rate (see Chapter 1). The activity rate increased to 80.2% in Q3 2019,
above the EU average of 78.8%. The long-term unemployment rate decreased to
2.2% in 2018, compared with the EU average of 2.9%. Labour market improvements
are also evident for young people, as the youth unemployment rate decreased sharply
(8.8% in 2018 from 11.2% in 2017).”

“Despite recent positive developments, the persistently high segmentation in

the labour market for young people remains a challenge. The share of
employees in precarious contracts (24) is at 3.7% (2018) significantly above the EU
average of 2.1%. The employment recovery led to the creation of many permanent
jobs, but young people are still more likely than other age groups to be employed in
non-standard types of work. These non-standard types of work include self-
employment; temporary or part-time jobs; involuntary part-time work; and low-paid
jobs. While the share of temporarily employed young people has declined in recent
years, it remains very high: 67% in 2018, significantly above the EU average of
43.5%.”

“Slovenia is one of the countries leading the EU in the prevention of early

leaving from education and training. With a rate of only 4.2% of early leaving
from education and training in 2018, Slovenia continues to be well below the EU
average (10.6%) and its Europe 2020 national target of 5%. The country has put in
place preventive measures to identify students who are at risk of leaving school early;
and to offer professional/educational assistance and inclusion in the school counselling
process. In addition, the ESF-financed programme Project Learning for Young Adults
targets the vulnerable group of young adults who leave school early and are not in
employment, education, or training. Project Learning for Young Adults helps them to
develop their potentials for successful participation in education; and to build
professional identity to facilitate their integration into employment and the wider
society. Slovenia also adopted many measures to create a supportive school
environment for pupils with migrant backgrounds, a group with a higher rate of early
school leaving than their non-migrant peers both in Slovenia and in other EU Member
States.”

For further youth-related matters please refer to the country report.

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The Youth Guarantee country by country - Slovenia

EMCO's assessment

Conclusions of the Employment Committee’s multilateral surveillance review

on youth employment, October 2019:

The implementation of the Youth Guarantee in Slovenia is advanced, with noticeable

improvements since the last review of the Youth Guarantee in 2017. A particular
strength of Slovenia's Youth Guarantee delivery is its comprehensive approach of
bringing together different programmes whose target group is young people.
Nonetheless, challenges remain, including in reaching out to hard-to-reach young
people with multifaceted problems, who require personalised guidance and closer
cooperation between public employment services, social workers and other actors,
including schools. Concerns have been expressed regarding staff turnover in public
employment services. Slovenia has achieved cooperation between all stakeholders
involved in the design, implementation and monitoring of the Youth Guarantee, but
needs to strive towards a more strategic approach rather than building on a project-
based approach. Career Centres for Youth and learning workshops have been
established. The OECD is carrying out a study, financed by the SRSS, on the situation
of the long-term unemployed, including NEETs, which will feed into discussions on
possible further improvements of policy actions.

Traineeships broadly comply with the Quality Framework for Traineeships, however
the latter should also be applied to open-market traineeships.

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The Youth Guarantee country by country - Slovenia

Youth Guarantee monitoring – Key data1

1. Main trends in young people's labour market performance

YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE NEET RATE

(as a share of the active 15 to 24 year-olds) (as a share of all 15 to 24 year-olds)

25% 25%

20% 21,6%
20%

15% 15%

10% 10%
10,4%
9,2%
8,1%
5% 5% 6,5% 7,0%

0% 0%
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019

2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
EU27 SI EU27 SI

Source: Eurostat, LFS (une_rt_a, edat_lfse_20)

2. Youth Guarantee delivery

Slovenia presented a Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan in January 2014. The

Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities is in charge of
establishing, managing and coordinating the Youth Guarantee, while the Employment
Service of Slovenia (i.e. the PES) is the main implementing institution although some
other organisations are also involved in providing services. Further information is
available in the YG implementation plan adopted in January 2014. An updated
implementation plan covering the period 2016-2020 was adopted in May 2016.

Information on the YG is provided via the PES website and a dedicated YG website.

1
The information below is taken from the country fiche related to the Youth Guarantee Data collection
(full results can be found on http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1143&langId=en#YGIF).

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YG monitoring data 2017-18

Source: DG EMPL, YG monitoring database, data extracted 09 December 2019.

NEETs data were extracted from Eurostat, Labour Force Survey on 21 June 2019.

Well over half (56.2%) of those registered in the Slovenian YG scheme at any point
during 2018 had been waiting for an offer for more than 4 months, a slight
improvement compared to 2017 (-2.8 pp) but still above the EU average of 48.6%.

Just over half (52.8%) of those leaving the scheme in 2018 took up an offer within 4
months of registration. This result means that Slovenia surpasses the EU average
(46.7%) for the first time following two consecutive years of substantial improvement
(+11.2 pp in 2017-18 and +19.4 pp in 2016-17).

On average during 2018, the YG scheme covered half (50.8%) of all NEETs aged
under 25. This coverage rate is more than 10 pp above the EU average of 38.9% but
is nevertheless lower than in 2017 (-5.3 pp) and 2016 (-12.6 pp). The reduced
coverage is likely to be linked to the increasing share of inactive NEETs in the overall
NEET population (65.2% in 2018 compared to 51.3% in 2016 and 45.7% in 2014).

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Previous year

From the 2019 country report (EN - SI):

“Labour market performance continues to improve, although certain

challenges remain. Activity and employment rates continued to increase in 2018 and
are currently at 79.7 % and 75.5 % respectively (Q3 2018). The unemployment rate
is at 5.2 % (Q3 2018), close to the pre-crisis level.”

“Inactivity rates of older and less skilled workers are high while labour
shortages are emerging. […] A mismatch between the skills young people acquire
at school or in tertiary education and the skills sought after by employers may be
contributing to the emerging labour shortages.”

“Data on the working years of younger generations reveal substantially lower

values of pension base. Younger generations will have accrued a lower number of
working years at retirement age and consequently receive lower pensions. (European
Commission and Social Protection Committee, 2018). The low number of accrued
working years is even more of a concern for non-standard workers, whose lower
density of work (compared to standard employment) is an additional problem.
Relatively short insurance periods have negative consequences for the longterm social
security of workers on fixed-term contracts (including casual and seasonal workers,
temporary agency workers, workers on civil contracts, etc.). Student work now
qualifies as a pension insurance period, but the insurance base is low.”

“Slovenia has a generally well performing education system, but it could be

improved in certain areas and sustained for the future. Slovenian students in
general education perform well in international comparisons. Socio-economic status is
comparatively less important for education outcomes (European Commission 2018b).
Its importance, however, grows with the level of education (Cankar et al., 2017) and
there are visible disparities when looking at pupil underachievement rates, especially
when comparing the top and bottom socioeconomic quartiles (European Commission
2018d). Literacy among young people has improved significantly and is high by
international standards, though performance of boys in reading literacy is still a
concern. At 4.3 %, the proportion of early school leavers is the second lowest in the
EU.”

“Young people lack digital skills. The International Computer and Information
Literacy results from 2013 show that only 16 % of pupils in primary school acquire the
necessary digital skills to use information and communications technology for
collecting and processing data and solving problems independently (Ministry of
Education, 2018). In addition, only around 5.5 % of high school students met all the
digital skills targets (National Examination Centre RIC, 2016; Ministry of Education,
2018).”

For further youth-related matters please refer to the country report.

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Links to further information

Youth Guarantee Knowledge centre – Including promising examples from Slovenia

https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1327&langId=en

Youth Guarantee implementation plan

http://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=13900&langId=en

Where to register for the Youth Guarantee?

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1218&langId=en

Youth Wiki Slovenia

https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/en/content/youthwiki/overview-
slovenia

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