The highly educated population of the Republic of Croatia forms the basis for its development in Industry 4.0. Highly skilled workers have a unique role in today’s economy. Creating living and working conditions for them is a challenge for society as a whole. Therefore, the aim of this research is to obtain a set of answers related to the transition from education to the world of work, institutional support in this regard, as well as all other problems and opportunities that final year students encounter. The subject of the research is the attitudes, perceptions and migration intentions of final year students on future job variables, push and pull factors of migration, staying in the Republic of Croatia, the role of migrant networks abroad, institutional support, various obstacles students face. The first part of the paper defines research questions, goals and hypotheses. The second part of the paper analyzes the achievements and the role of Active Employment Policy. At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a new global recession is announced, the role of public employment services is becoming crucial in combating the effects of the crisis, and as in the global crisis of 2008, this crisis is expected to have the greatest consequences on youth employment. The third part of the paper analyzes the measures of the Active Labor Policy aimed at young people and indicators related to youth in the labor market, the effects of unemployment on the young population and the focus on particularly vulnerable groups of young people in the labor market. The fourth part deals with education and the transition from the world of education to the world of work, the importance of institutional support, lifelong learning and development (especially in light of Industry 4.0 and ubiquitous digitization), and the importance of financial independence for young people. The fifth part of the paper deals with the characteristics of the new generation of labor force, youth migration and brain drain, and quality of life. The sixth part refers to the results of the research. The sample involved 356 students from five different scientific fields. The survey questionnaire was distributed online, and the obtained results were processed in the SPSS software package. The results of the processing took place in four phases: in the first phase the variables were described by descriptive statistics, in the second phase the normality of the distribution was tested by the One sample Kologorov-Smirnov test, in the third phase the correlations of variables contained in hypotheses were tested with identification of statistically significant correlations. Of the 12 hypotheses set, 10 were confirmed and 2 were rejected. In the fourth phase of hierarchical regression testing, push and pull factors were tested. It was shown that the applied model significantly predicts 55,3% of the variance of the criteria (dependent variable: intention to migrate abroad), R2 adjusted 53,2.