ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has significant consequences in many areas and has largely contributed to rising unemployment in almost all countries. The situation is similar in Slovavkia, where various degrees of shutdown measures have caused an inflow of newly unemployed people in all age groups. This article focuses on unemployed youth as a vulnerable and disadvantaged group of the working population, as starting a career during a pandemic is complicated or even impossible in some industries under these conditions. In this study, the real situation in Slovakia in 2020-2021 is compared with the development of the job market before the pandemic and its counterfactual prediction under the hypothetical situation of no pandemic. The main contribution of the study is the quantification of the extent of the pandemic impact on unemployed youth, but also on other age groups;this evaluation can be considered very accurate given the counterfactual approach used. The analysis uses a counterfactual before-after comparison together with a statistical model for predicting the development of the inflow of the number of newly unemployed, which provides an accurate quantification of the amount of the pandemic's impact on unemployment. The results of this study can be used in practice to identify the most affected groups of the population and to implement policy measures aimed at mitigating the effects of the pandemic, and then to adjust the intensity and amount of allocated funds that will be needed to be spent to support the placement of young people into the labor market.