The Youth Employment Skills (YES) Network

The Youth Employment Skills (YES) Network developed as the strategy for building skills of the young workforce, and was designed to match the skills of young potential workers to the fast-changing demand in the workplaces demonstrating the most growth. Like in many other countries, high rates of youth unemployment in Macedonia are a measure of a more complex situation.

Formal schooling focuses on academics rather than on providing youth with the personal skills they need to succeed in the workplace, and attempts to maintain curricula on current technical skills have fallen short.

Moreover, there is no system for connecting either new graduates or older disconnected, unemployed youth with job opportunities.

As with other countries in the region, there have not yet been effective structured processes put into place to meet these challenges. However, throughout Macedonia, willing partners exist.