How can we equip young people with the skills, information and opportunities necessary to succeed in the labour market?

Youth unemployment is a complex issue with many facets. Young people are in very different situations: there are young people of 18 to 25 having completed compulsory education or even university students and who fail at finding a job in the field of their studies. Others, 16 to 21 have failed to finish compulsory education and are in risk of social exclusion. Neither they nor the labour market often manage to imagine ways in which they can access or create jobs that generate value. There are also young people who entered the labour market prematurely (attracted mainly by the salaries of the building sector) and are now unemployed and with few options to relocate to other sectors. And finally, there are young people who have not managed to consolidate the transition from sporadic jobs, internships and underemployment to full time proper employment.

The research of proven innovations should focus particularly on those solutions that focus on youth, but without closing the door to more generic solutions. In particular, special attention will be given to those solutions that will: match the training of young people with the labour market needs, integrate young people at risk of social exclusion through employment and promote entrepreneurship as an alternative to seeking employment, creating new jobs not only for themselves entrepreneurs, but also for other young people.