CAN OKUN’s LAW EXPLAIN DECENT WORK DEFICIT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE IN EUROPE? A FOCUS ON THE ROMANIAN ECONOMY

Due to the growing concern about the labour market situation of young people in Europe, this paper analysis the effective role played by real output growth in stimulating job creation. To reach this goal, one strand of this analysis empirically investigates the real output growth effects on the youth unemployment rate (15-24) by testing the difference version of the Okun’s law. The most interesting result relates to the case of the Romanian economy whose Okun’s law does not fit so well. We additionally test the Okun’s law on a set of Decent Work Indicators in order to verify whether a Decent Work deficit exists among young workers within the European labour market.