Statistical portrait of the first steps in the labour market of the 2017 Generation in France
This new publication provides a multidimensional insight into the pathway of graduates through the labour market during their first three years of working life through 32 topics grouped into 6 separate parts.
Who are the young people entering the labour market?
- Nearly 80% have a baccalaureate (78%) and nearly 50% have a higher education diploma (47%). Non-graduates account for 12% of school leavers, i.e. over 90,000 young people.
- Graduates with 5 years of higher education (EQF level 7) are four times more likely to have a mother who is an executive (35%) than non-graduates (9%).
- 8 out of 10 young people with a Bac+5 degree (EQF level 7) graduated from a "general baccalaureate".
- Almost 60% of the generation (440,000 young people) continued their studies after the baccalaureate, but 22% (97,000) of them failed in higher education.
- More than a quarter of young people (27%) report having had a paid job during their studies. For more than half of them, it was a regular job ('over 8 hours a week'). This is more likely to be the case for university graduates. For two thirds of them, this job had no connection with their studies. 44% stated that this experience disrupted their academic course, especially when the job was unrelated to their studies.
- For 78% of young people, this regular employment enabled them to acquire useful skills for the future. For more than a third of them (38%), these experiences influenced their career plans.
What kind of integration? What are the employment dynamics?
- 39% of the respondents have had only 1 employer. Whereas 51% of PhDs in health, 58% of engineering graduates have had only 1 employer.
- 10% of the generation has never been employed, 35% of non-graduates.
- Mobility on the labour market mainly concerns Bac (EQF level 4) and BTS-DUT graduates (EQF level 5), 30 to 33% of whom have experienced at least three employment sequences.
- Among the 90% (675,000) of the young people in the generation who held at least one job after leaving their education and training, 63% had a fixed-term contract and 37% had an open-ended contract in their first employment. The rates of transition from a fixed-term job to an open-ended job vary greatly depending on the qualification: 24% among non-graduates and 59% among graduates of long-cycle higher education.
- Young people experience both promotion and downgrading. During a 3-year period, one in five young people were promoted and 7% were downgraded.
- After 3 years, at equivalent levels, women's income is lower than that of men. For the whole generation, the median net monthly income is €1,250 for women, compared to €1,350 for men.
When young people are not in employment...
- Unemployment is strongly related to the level of education: 50% of non-graduates experienced more than 3 months of unemployment before finding their first job, compared to only 16% of university graduates.
- 17 % of the respondents returned to education in the 3 years following their completion of the initial education and training in 2017. Most of these are young people who stopped their studies because they were not accepted for a training course and have now returned to schooling (28%). Those returning to education are mostly students with a baccalaureate or without a higher education diploma (32%).
- "Civic service" is a pathway taken by 9% of the generation, 10% of women, 12% of young people from deprived neighbourhoods of cities and 17% of graduates from a general baccalaureate. Young people who have carried out a civic service during their first 3 years of working life found that it served as their first professional experience (excluding work placements during their studies) in 68% of cases and even represents the only employment experience in 18% of cases.
Authors:
Flavie Le Bayon, Céreq
Gaëlle Dabet, Céreq
Olivier Joseph, Céreq
Manon Olaria, Céreq