3. Employment & Entrepreneurship
There is no single body responsible for youth employment and entrepreneurship as the domain covers several policy areas – most importantly education, youth, labour market, economic affairs - which have established a different division of tasks between different ministries responsible for policy areas and between local and central level. The main governmental authorities relevant to youth employment and entrepreneurship are as follows:
- the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications: responsible for developing entrepreneurship and economic affairs;
- the Ministry of Education and Research: responsible for youth policy and education policy;
- the Ministry of Social Affairs: responsible for labour market policy, but also for social protection and services including child and family policy.
The guidance services are currently financed with the support of EU structural assistance, specifically European Social Fund. The services in the education sector (which are more directly targeted to youth and which also include pedagogical counselling and other support for learning) have a dedicated budget 13 664 413 euros for the years 2023-2029. Currently, in Estonia, apprenticeship studies are less common than traditional school-based programmes. Workplace-based study-schemes are not used widely.