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The article aims to describe the role of training and examines the impact on the wages of university and college graduates.

We use nationwide administrative data on university and college graduates in 2019. The population includes 1.3 million observations, of which 222,000 (∼16%) received training after graduation from an educational institution (from July 2019 to 2022). We used OLS and the “difference-in-differences” methods to estimate the returns to training. Estimates obtained using the DID method turned out to be several times smaller because they consider unobserved characteristics (abilities).

We obtained several key findings. First, the participation of graduates in training is high, despite their recent education. Second, undergoing training is conditional on the existence of wage returns. The results show a wage premium of 17.8% (OLS method) and 2.0% (DID method). Third, graduates from nonselective universities (with low state exam score) try to participate more actively in training to acquire missing knowledge and skills. The wage premium for graduates from nonselective universities is 19.1% (OLS method) and 5.1% (DID method). Fourth, there is a high return to training for graduates from socially relevant fields (education and healthcare), where training is regular and mandatory.

This paper is one of the first to estimate the involvement and returns to training for graduates using nationwide administrative data in Russia.

This paper aims to determine the influence of various enterprise characteristics on on-the-job training. The paper focuses mainly on identifying the influence of a firm’s innovative activity, technological capacity for manufacturing and product market competition on its likelihood of having a training program and on training intensity.

The authors administered a firm-level survey to a sample of 2,000 Russian enterprises. This survey includes questions about on-the-job training and key information about the companies’ activities. Probit and ordered probit estimates are used in the statistical analyses.

The results indicate that an enterprise’s provision of training is determined largely by firm-specific factors, such as its innovative activity, technical and technological state of manufacturing and product market competition. The authors adopt two widely used measures of training: incidence and intensity. Innovative activity and the technical and technological state of manufacturing are decisive factors in explaining a firm’s provision of training, as they have a strictly positive effect on both the incidence and the intensity of training. Product market competition has a positive effect on the incidence of training and a negative effect on the intensity of training.

This paper is original because it assumes that the process of deciding whether to implement a training program at an enterprise and the corresponding proportion of employees involved in training is built on the presupposition that the training intensity decision is made in two stages. This paper is the first to present estimates of on-the-job training intensity based on data from Russian enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to show how young educated adults in the state of precarity perceive the lack of stability in their employment, life and prospects, and what influences their decision making with respect to their career.

Qualitative research on evidence from ten semi-structured in-depth interviews. The method of analysis is consensual qualitative research.

Young Russian adults in the state of precarity have little interest in stable employment, believing it imposes inadequately tight constraints in terms of work organisation, as compared to the potentially modest returns in terms of career development and professional self-actualisation. The respondents tend to choose work which corresponds to the rhythm of their lives and preferences. They are willing to sacrifice stability and higher income in the hope of achieving career success and financial prosperity in the future. They do not hope for or expect assistance from the state but feel fully responsible for their own lives. The downside of this optimism is the lack of long-term plans and, hence, the uncertainty of the future.

The authors not only consider the state of precarity as an effect of structural factors such as the state of the labour market, but also aim to show the role of the worker’s agency in creating such a situation. Instead of the conventional view of precarious individuals solely as victims of circumstances, this study suggests to regard them as actors whose experience, goals and aspirations determine career and life choices.