Young people moving from education into work are at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives, and this is especially the case for the least qualified, who will generally experience the greatest difficulties in establishing a foothold in the labour market. Although this chapter does not include a comprehensive examination of the school-to-work transition literature and data(24), given the challenges faced by many young people at the start of their working lives, compounded in some circumstances by excessive labour market segmentation, it is important to note some of the stylised facts concerning school-to-work transitions.
Chart 17 presents the age distribution for the first ‘regular’ job(25), noting that the median age varies from 20 in Greece and Cyprus to 15 years in Portugal.
Chart 18 presents employment rates for people between 15 to 29 years of age, one, five and ten years after having completed initial education. One year after completion of initial education, a significant proportion of young people are not in employment, although the situation varies considerably across EU Member States - with employment rates varying from 16% in Greece to 77% in Denmark.(26) Gradually youth employment rates converge to those of the 25-49 prime-age section of the population. Although employment rates for men and women are very similar one year after completing school, a gender gap progressively emerges as marriage and motherhood begin to reduce the participation rates of young women. However, the employment rate gender gap ten years after school completion varies considerably across Member States - from 6% in Lithuania to 41% in Estonia in 2007.
Although there are considerable differences between Member States, the important general finding is that youth with low qualifications have significantly lower employment rates one, five and ten years after leaving initial education (OECD, 2008). These results confirm that low educational attainment presents an enduring barrier to employment (i.e. better educated young people experience a quicker transition to employment) while showing that it also appears to impede initial insertion in the labour market.(27) However, despite a large cross-country variation, most Member States with high overall employment rates for recent school leavers achieve relatively high employment rates for youth of all levels of education.
(24) | OECD (2008) provides a comparative analysis of school-to-work transition, making use of both cross-sectional and longitudinal data. The OECD has also recently conducted a country-by-country thematic review, Jobs for Youth, intended to provide the basis for a comprehensive re-assessment of youth labour market outcomes and policies facilitating their integration in the labour market. |
(25) | It explores the information content of the variable ‘When began the first regular job’ (PL190), which is part of the EU SILC longitudinal component. ‘Regular
job’ is a self-reported variable. Normally, the job considered should be the first one involving 15 hours or more per week which lasted for at least 6 months, unless
it was terminated by a period of unemployment or by another job. If the person starts working in a formal regular work, during his/her studies, this work should be considered as the first regular job. Therefore, some respondents reported a first job age below the legal minimum. |
(26) | Given the illustrative purposes of this exercise, indicators were calculated only for the year 2007, because of the very large dimension of the users’ LFS micro dataset. |
(27) | OECD (2008) argues that an age effect also probably depresses initial employment rates for low skilled youth still living with their parents and delaying entry to the labour market. |