The impact of within country heterogeneity in vocational specificity on initial job matches and job status

Abstract

This paper analyses the impact of vocational specificity on school-to-work transitions in terms of initial job mismatches and socioeconomic status at the individual level. Considering heterogeneity amongst the various qualifications in Austria, the study finds that the positive impact of specificity on initial labour market placement known from cross-country research also holds within the highly stratified Austrian system in which various vocational specialisations are provided at the upper secondary level. Independent of the level and field of the qualification obtained, vocational specificity facilitates initial labour market placement, resulting in a reduced mismatch risk and an increase in initial jobs status. In the course of subsequent labour market adjustments, however, holders of general qualifications attain higher status gains when changing jobs. Likewise, the overqualified can make up for a good part of their initial status penalty on labour market entrance through job changes. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.2

School-to-Work Linkages, Educational Mismatches, and Labor Market Outcomes

“…Recent scholarship shows different levels of attachment of educational qualifications to occupational destinations, both between and within national educational systems (Allen et al 2000;Vogtenhuber 2014;DiPrete et al 2017;Forster and Bol 2018). DiPrete et al (2017) find substantial heterogeneity in the strength of linkage between educational outcomes and the occupational distribution at the same educational level in the same country.…”

Training Programmes in Sustainable Forest Management in Austria, Croatia and Slovenia

“…Those were mainly focused on the correlation between VET and the labour market [27][28][29][30][31], the innovative approach in LLL [32,33], VET and LLL policy and state [34][35][36][37][38], the processes of assessment and evaluation of VET [39,40], and specific methods of LLL [41]. However, those addressing VET and LLL in SFM are scarce [25,[42][43][44][45][46].…”

The Status of the Vocational Graduated Students According to Approved Targets: A Qualitative Research

“…Development of studying ability, communication and self-educating ability (The Ministry of Education, 1995). School-to-work-transition is a complex process that is reflexively constituted by integrating individual agency with the opportunity structures in which young people find themselves in under conditions of increasing transition discontinuities, contingency and unpredictability (Vogtenhuber, 2014). The success of vocational instruction in educating skilled and powerful labor force has been discussed in several studies and there are contradicting official reports on how successful technical and vocational programs are.…”

“…Whilst some studies regard job mismatches amongst labour market entrants as a temporary phenomenon that diminishes over time after accumulating work experience and job-related skills (for a review see Quintini, 2011), a considerable body of evidence points to the long-term negative effects of a mismatched labour market entry (Brunner & Kuhn, 2010;Genda, Kondo, & Ohta, 2010;Vogtenhuber, 2014;Kahn, 2010;Oreopoulos, von Wachter, & Heisz, 2012).…”