Bocharov V. Yu. The concept of work-life balance as the basis for a typology of strategies for labor behavior of working youth. Social and labor research. 2020; 39(2):113-129. DOI: 10.34022 ...

Abstract

The relevance of searching for grounds to classify strategies for labor behavior of working youth is due to the need to accelerate the modernization of the Russian economy and the effective use of leverage to manage social reserves to ensure the success of this process. The object of study is working youth (15-29 years old) employed in industry and in the service sector. The aim of the work is to build a typology of strategies for labor behavior of working youth based on their perception of work-life balance (conflict) by means of factor and cluster analysis methods. The empirical base of the study is the results of a mass questionnaire survey of working youth (15-29 years old) of the Ural Federal District (2018, N = 1534). The method of the work is a factor analysis performed using the SPSS program package (Varimax rotation method with Kaiser Normalization). It helped distinguish two groups of factors affecting the perception of work-life balance among working youth: factors of job satisfaction and factors of sufficiency/lack of free time. The study emphasizes that young women are more negatively affected by the impact of work-life conflict. Based on these factors, the author carried out a cluster analysis (K-Means method) and identified three social types considering the previously developed a priori typology of economic and labor behavior models of working youth: “earning”, “surviving”, and “adapted”. Each of these types of working youth has a specific labor behavior model and a strategy for its implementation. The study results may contribute to the development of theoretical concepts and accumulation of empirical data in the field of economic sociology, labor sociology and youth sociology. They may also be of further use to enterprise management to make sound management decisions in the field of youth personnel and social policy, and to government and employment services to develop regional targeted programs for the efficient use of labor resources of working youth.