The Impact of Economic Crisis on Graduates’ Employment and Work

Abstract

Resumen: Analizamos la situación en el mercado laboral de titulados de universidades públicas catalanas, comparando las cohortes de 2004 (expansión económica), 2007 (inicio de la crisis económica), y 2010 (durante la crisis). En un primer análisis descriptivo, encontramos un aumento en el desempleo que afectó de manera diferenciada a los titulados en función del sexo, el origen social, la titulación y el trabajo durante los estudios. Un segundo análisis tipológico mostró una estructura homogénea de las ocupaciones entre las cohortes. Sin embargo, a partir de la cohorte 2010, la más expuesta a la crisis, disminuyó la cantidad absoluta de titulados con mejores condiciones laborales y se amplió la cantidad de graduados en ocupaciones más desprotegidas.Palabras clave: Transición a la vida profesional, Educación superior, Mercado laboral, Crisis económica.

Employment Outcomes of Higher Education Graduates from during and after the 2007–2008 Financial Crisis: Evidence from a Romanian University

“…A comparative analysis of the labor market outcomes obtained 5 years after graduation by almost 12,000 Catalan graduates from periods before and during the economic crisis [8] showed not only a decrease in the employment rate among the promotions that graduated during the crisis, but also a deterioration of the quality of the jobs they could access, characterized by precariousness, lack of protection, professional stagnation, and low income.…”

“…Employment during university studies seems also to matter for the later employment outcomes of graduates. Navarro-Cendejas and Fachelli [8] note that people who worked during their university studies, especially in a field related to their studies, have the upper hand on the labor market, compared to their counterparts, since they had the opportunity to combine the knowledge developed through formal education with the training and experience gained through work. Employment during university studies has been found to positively influence the period of transition from education to employment, by shortening the duration of the first job search [32][33][34].…”

“…Consequently, graduates' employability is commonly used as an indicator in the assessment of the quality of higher education programs in various countries [3][4][5] and the labor market outcomes of university graduates stand out as an important topic for higher education research and policy [3,5,6]. Authors in this field use two main frameworks when assessing the labor market outcomes of university graduates: (1) a quantitative one, referring to their employability, assessed via their employment rate [2,7], and (2) a qualitative one, referring to the quality of the jobs secured by the graduates, assessed via various objective characteristics, such as the salary level, the type of contract, or the horizontal matching of the job with the field of study [8,9], as well as subjective ones, such as perceived employability and perceived career success [10].…”

“…Under this paradigm, the graduates' labor market outcomes are determined mainly by two categories of factors: (1) those that act at a macro-level and are not under the control of the individual (such as the positive or negative circumstances of the labor market); and (2) those that act at a micro-level, over which the individual has some form or level of control (such as the choice to participate in internship programs). In the same vein, Navarro-Cendejas and Fachelli [8] propose that, in the analysis of complex processes, such as the university-to-work transition of graduates, a "historical angle" should be established, in which the characteristics of the wider-scale context are taken into consideration, for a better understanding of the processes that take place and the ways in which context shapes outcomes.…”

La movilidad ocupacional de los graduados en las universidades p�blicas catalanas

“…Los datos que exploraremos están atravesados por la primera etapa de la crisis (Navarro y Fachelli, 2017) y no nos permiten analizar la situación con otros grupos de graduados en décadas anteriores, pero en todo caso estamos analizando una generación de titulados que ha tenido tiempo de insertarse antes de que la crisis los afecte profundamente.…”