Determinants of the position of young people in the labour market in European Union countries: a PLS-SEM model and intervention strategies

The aim of this study is to assess the position of young people in the labour markets of European Union countries and to identify its key determinants. The analysis addresses three objectives: evaluating youth labour market outcomes, diagnosing the main factors shaping these outcomes, and identifying the challenges for designing effective public policy interventions. The study is based on secondary data from Eurostat and other EU statistical sources. Since the youth labour market position and its determinants can be captured by multiple rather than single indicators, we applied a model based on the PLS-SEM method. To our knowledge, this is the first application of PLS-SEM in a cross-country study of the youth labour market in the European Union, which constitutes the methodological novelty of the paper. The results indicate economic performance exerts the strongest positive impact on the position of young people, followed by education, while social exclusion negatively affects youth labour market integration. These findings highlight both expected and less intuitive patterns, offering new insights into cross-country differences. Social exclusion exerts a negative impact on the position of young people in the labour market. The proposed methodological approach and the empirical results provide an important reference point for policymakers. They may inform the development of more effective and regionally differentiated measures aimed at strengthening the integration of young people into the labour market across Europe.