The Lost Generation. An Analysis On The Employability Of Higher Education Graduates In Europe. Case Study: Romania

During the last years of the 20th century, the youth’s employment became a central subject for many economic and social studies and reports. The actual economic crisis has generated a lot of challenges for the youths on the labour market. Transition from school to work will be, at least on short term, difficult for the new generation, who will came into concurrence with persons who are already searching for a job. In the same time, employers will become more and more selective regarding new personal recruitment. The main idea of this study is that in the developed societies we may find two important aspects of the impact of crisis on youth’s employment. On one hand, there is an impact on the highly educated youths, who have a high education degree and are preparing to enter on the labour market. During economic recession they are facing unemployment, low wages, and low paid jobs. When economic growth is starting they are facing another problem: employers will be tempted to hire young graduates instead of those who have graduated years before, and who are facing again the risk of being unemployed. In these situations, young graduates in times of economic recessions are often called, in sociological literature, the lost generation.