In France, two years after school completion and getting the same diploma, the employment rate of apprentices is about 15 percentage points higher than that of vocational students.Despite this di↵erence, this paper shows that there is almost no di↵erence between the probability of getting a callback from employers for unemployed youth formerly either apprentices or vocational students. This result indicates that the higher employment rate of apprentices does not rely, in the French context, on better job access of those who do not remain in their training firms. The estimation of a job search and matching model shows that the expansion of apprenticeship has very limited e↵ects on youth unemployment if this is not accompanied by an increase in the retention of apprentices in their training firm.

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Although short message services (SMS) are constantly used to transmit information, little is known about the use of SMS by public institutions to direct people. This paper presents a field experiment in France about the effectiveness of SMS in directing disadvantaged people toward public services. Two types of treatment SMS were provided: one type had its content written in a formal style; the second type SMS style was much informal. All the SMS were individualized and included specific information about the agencies. Results indicate that the SMS had no significant effect on enrollment. There is also no apparent heterogeneous effect according to individual, agency, or location characteristics. In line with other academic evidence, these findings suggest that SMS have very limited effectiveness in directing this population toward public services.

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