Mechanisms of youth employment, its labor mobility and stability of work place are analyzed in the article. Basing on the materials of special sociological survey conducted by RANEPA in 2017, it is shown that mechanisms of non-meritocratic type based on social links operate in the sphere of youth employment. At the same time, the resource of social ties is rather scarce for the majority of young people. In comparison with more favourable periods of economic development the youth has reduced its ambitions concerning wages, however, the real salary remains lower than desired (averagely, by 30%). The low level of salary is the main stimulus to change of workplace, but to find higher paid job, as the most respondents believe, is hard or even impossible. The keystone to stability in employment is qualitative professional education, success of a company where young people work and their social capital, but generally these resources obtain less than 10% of young employees.