Modern political and economic challenges have exacerbated the problem of high unemployment among young professionals and at the same time have created the problem of an acute shortage of qualified personnel. The reasons for this disparity can be found in the imbalance of youth policy and policy in the field of labor and employment promotion. The establishment of a mechanism for their interaction should begin with solving the issue of the inaccuracy of the conceptual apparatus used in the legal foundations of these areas of domestic social policy. First of all, it is necessary to reconsider the approach to the definition of the concept of “young professionals”.

The purpose of the study is to scientifically substantiate the modernization of the concept of “young professionals” for the purposes of labor and employment legislation. Research objectives: to identify and analyze the legal content of the “young professionals” category in the context of labor and employment issues; to systematize guarantees of labor rights and rights in the field of employment promotion of young professionals; to formulate proposals for reforming Russian legislation in the field under study.

The methodological basis of the research is the general scientific dialectical method of cognition of objective reality, various general scientific logical techniques, the method of content analysis and private legal methods of cognition (formal legal, comparative legal, historical and legal methods and the method of system analysis). Considerable attention is paid to the study of a large array of strategic planning documents and regulatory legal acts adopted at the federal and regional levels, as well as industry agreements.

It is concluded that employment is one of the basic components of the quality of working life of young professionals. In this regard, the necessity of adapting the concept of “young professionals”, enshrined in the legal framework of youth policy, for the purposes of labor and employment legislation is justified. The variety of approaches developed in law-making activity to the definition of the signs of the concept of “young specialist” is revealed. To ensure uniform practice, it is proposed to formulate a definition of this concept on the basis of a dynamic approach and fix it in the Law on Employment of the Population.