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Employability of young graduates in Europe

Christelle Laetitia Garrouste, Margarida Rodrigues

International Journal of Manpower

ISSN: 0143-7720

Article publication date: 1 July 2014

2386

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to measure the potential role of the field of education and the fact of having worked during studies on the employability of the higher educated (ISCED 5-6) cohort targeted by the ET2020 graduates’ employability benchmark.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the same data source as the benchmark (i.e. the annual LFS microdata from 2004 to 2010), and exploring the additional transition questions collected in the LFS 2009 ad hoc module, the authors define and test four hypotheses using a probit approach on each EU country.

Findings

The degree plays a significant role in the employability of young graduates across countries and time. In terms of probability of employment, the leading field is health and welfare. In terms of type of contracts, the leading fields are social sciences and engineering. Moreover, what labour markets seem to value the most is the capacity of higher educated students to combine high-level studies and work, i.e. a high workload capacity and intellectual flexibility.

Practical implications

Reaching the new European target of a minimum of 82 per cent of employment of young graduates will require countries to invest wisely in the most “employable” fields of education. This analysis will help policy makers in their future orientations towards that target.

Originality/value

The originality of this work lies in its exploration of the exact same extraction of microdata used for the computation of the ET2020 Benchmark indictor and in its immediate political implications for the monitoring of this benchmark.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This paper uses microdata from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for the years 2004 to 2010, extracted 14 September, 2011, and microdata of the LFS 2009 ad hoc module. The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. All remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Citation

Laetitia Garrouste, C. and Rodrigues, M. (2014), "Employability of young graduates in Europe", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 425-447. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-05-2013-0106

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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