Search

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium is higher in the United States than in any of the other comparison countries, despite the fact that the U.S. has a larger share of workers in STEM jobs. We also find evidence that the premium varies significantly across STEM sub-fields and education levels, and that the premium tends to be higher in countries with lower unionization rates, less employment protection, or a larger share of employment in the public sector.

This paper investigates the effects of migration and work experience on university-to-work transitions of German university graduates. We use a job search model, signaling and social network theory to discuss different links between the duration of labor market entry, graduate mobility and work experience. We apply event history analyses and make use of administrative social security records to examine whether work experience and pre-study as well as post-study migration accelerates the labor market entry of graduates. Our regression results stress the importance of both mobility and work experience for the length of the transition period. However, whether the effect is beneficial or adverse depends on the type of graduate migration and previous employment.

Twelve qualitative case studies in German and Canadian hospitals and IT companies were used in this mixed-methods study analysing the labour market outcomes of immigrants. The reported case studies investigate the immigrants' recognition, integration process and the usability of foreign qualifications, skills and work experiences in the labour market. Furthermore, the strategies and rationales of employers and employees within the recruiting process are analysed. Here, the focus lies on the transferability and obstacles of cultural and social capital across country borders as well as the relevant framework conditions. This paper refers to Bourdieu's approach towards different types of capital as well as the rational choice theory. The results demonstrate that immigrants in both countries face more obstacles accessing the labour market within the health sector than within the IT sector. The context of the recruiting situation strongly affects the strategies and behaviour of the employers or the recruiters. Within these sector- and country-specific confines, individual factors determine the immigrants' labour market success. Furthermore, the sector and the country affect the relevance of each individual factor in the recruiting process.

Context: Vocational education and training (VET) is expected to be designed for creating learning outcomes which meet the needs for skills and competences in the labour market. Hence, identifying current and upcoming skill requirements and ensuring that these requirements are incorporated into education has long been the subject of academic and policy discussion. Governance processes keeping VET systems up-to-date have been more recently addressed as 'feedback mechanisms'. The term broadly summarizes the interplay of institutions, actors and processes which allows the continuous renewal of VET provision (i.e. by creating new qualifications or updating curricula). The aim of the paper is to enhance the understanding of cross-national variations in formally institutionalised 'feedback mechanisms' between VET and the labour market. Method: The research builds on a comparative analysis of case studies in 15 European countries. The paper presents examples for four different 'formal feedback mechanisms' in Germany, France, England, and Austria. Results: Four main types of formal mechanism have been identified: 1) The liberal model explained by VET in England and Higher VET in Austria; 2) The statist model explained by school-based VET in Austria; 3) the participatory model explained by VET in France and 4) the coordinated model explained by apprenticeship training in Germany and Austria. Conclusions: Existing approaches in the economic sociology of labour markets, the varieties of capitalism approach as well as comparative research on welfare states are useful

Previous research has shown that temporary employment is negatively associated with many psychological and job-related outcomes, such as well-being, health, wages, organisational commitment, and job satisfaction. Among recent doctoral graduates, the proportion of temporary contracts is particularly high. However, research on the association between contract type and job satisfaction specifically among doctoral graduates is scarce. Therefore, whether and how obtaining permanent employment affects doctoral graduates' job satisfaction remains a notable research gap that we intend to narrow by using panel data from a recent doctoral graduation cohort and by adopting a panel research design. We examine what effect obtaining permanent employment has on doctoral graduates' job satisfaction and whether this effect differs by labour market sector. We use panel data that are representative of the 2014 doctoral graduation cohort in Germany and their career trajectories up to five years after graduation. We apply fixed-effects regression to approximate the within-effect of obtaining a permanent employment contract on job satisfaction. The analyses indicate that obtaining permanent employment increases doctoral graduates' job satisfaction and that this increase is not driven by time-varying confounders. We also find that doctoral graduates' labour market sector moderates the effect: the increase in job satisfaction is highest in the academic sector and statistically significantly different from that in the private sector. Overall, this paper offers new insights into the effect of obtaining a permanent contract on the job satisfaction of recent doctoral graduates throughout their first years after graduation, when they are often employed on temporary contracts.

Purpose: This paper aims to understand the development track of skills mismatch research and discover the hidden internal connections between literature. Design/methodology/approach: The authors gathered data through scientometric quantitative analysis using CiteSpace. Specifically, this article applied basic analysis, journal cocitation analysis (JCA), author cocitation analysis (ACA) and document cocitation analysis (DCA), cluster analysis, citation burstness detection, scientific research cooperation analysis and coconcurrence analysis of keywords of 3,125 documents from Web of Science core collections for the period 2000-2020. Findings: Through the document cocitation analysis and the keywords' co-occurrence, this article identifies influential scholars, documents, research institutions, journals and research hotspots in research on the skills mismatch phenomenon. The results showed that the publications had ballooned, and the phenomenon has become an interdisciplinary research subject. The USA and Finland remain the main contributors, which is attributed to their high-yield institutions such as the University of Helsinki, the University of Witwatersrand, the University of Washington and so on. While the African continent lacks research on skills mismatch even with the continent's effort to overcome such a crucial issue. The paper presents an in-depth analysis of skills and educational mismatch issues to better understand the evolutionary trajectory of the collective knowledge over the past 20 years and highlight the areas of active pursuit. Research limitations/implications: The authors only used Web of Science core collection to collect data; however, they can added Scopus indexed database as well to extend the research trends and explore more new research hot topics to solve the skills mismatch phenomenon. Originality/value: The scientometric analysis is of great significance for identifying the potential relationship between the literature and investigating the knowledge evolution of skills mismatch research. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization are the giants who are mostly concerned of the mismatch skills phenomenon. Researchers can refer to this study to understand the status quo, gaps and research trends to deal with the skills mismatch issue.

Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance wage differences between men and women. In addition, the gender wage gap varies across the wage distribution. Differences in the association between training participation and wages for men and women across the earnings spectrum may offer an explanation as to why the discrepancy in female/male earnings is larger at some point of the wage distribution compared to others. Approach: Using data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and unconditional quantile regression, this paper examines whether the association between workplace training and wages differs between men and women at different points of the wage distribution across 14 European countries. To partly control for endogeneity in training participation, detailed measures of cognitive skills have been included in the models. Findings: Findings show gender differences in the association between training and wages across the wage distribution. In most countries, results indicate larger training coefficients for women than men at the lower end of the wage spectrum whereas they are larger for men at the top. This pattern holds across most countries with the only exception of Liberal ones, where women benefit less than men across the entire wage spectrum. Conclusions: The findings of this work reveal that distributional variations in returns to workplace training follow a similar pattern across industrialized countries, despite their different institutional settings. Moreover, differences in training coefficients of men and women at different parts of the wage distribution suggest that training could reduce gender wage differences among low earners and potentially widen the gap in wages among individuals at the top of the wage distribution.

This paper compares within-country programmes of initial vocational education and training (IVET) in Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany and their outcomes. Specifically, it aims to analyse and compare the labour market success of graduates of different tracks at the ISCED 3 level in both early and later stages of their careers. The comparison is based on the analysis of PIAAC 2013 OECD study data. A composite multidimensional indicator was constructed to measure labour market success and subsequently used as a dependent variable in regression models. The results indicate that in the systems with dual IVET at the ISCED 3 level (Germany and Austria), graduates are indeed more successful at the labour market than their counterparts with other ISCED 3 tracks. However, their advantage diminishes in later stages of the career. Additionally, in Austria, the success of dual education young graduates is mediated by individual characteristics. In the system with only school-based IVET (the Czech Republic), this track does not guarantee substantively higher labour market success for young graduates compared to other ISCED 3 tracks and also to those with lower education. Czech apprentices in the later stages of career succeed even less than those with below ISCED 3 education.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the qualification measures of 12 German multi-national companies (MNCs), all of which are present in China, India and Mexico. In particular, the transfer of dual initial training practices and further training measures are investigated. It examines the impact consistent training strategies across national borders have emerged in German companies or local arrangements have developed despite identical internal influencing factors. Design/methodology/approach: Because of its design, the focus is on the external factors that influence the companies' training measures. However, an exploratory approach was followed. To pursue the research question face-to-face expert interviews were conducted with 46 training managers in 12 active companies in all 3 countries. The interviews were completely transcribed and evaluated using qualitative methods. Findings: The analysis shows that it is not internal company factors but country-specific contextual factors that influence training measures and that companies cannot act in the same way worldwide. Research limitations/implications: The study is based on 12 MNC and only analyses the blue-collar area. Therefore, it would have to be evaluated whether a similar analysis would result from a survey of other companies in different sectors or whether the differences in terms of training and further training measures would then be even greater. Practical implications: The study supports the internationalization strategies of MNC by providing first-hand empirical results concerning recruitment and training of blue colour workers on an intermediate skill level. It gives evidence on the need of national adaptation in the process of transferring training cultures from countries of origin into the host countries. More attention must, therefore, be paid to external factors when developing and implementing training measures. Social implications: The economic development in many countries includes an expansion of foreign investments. MNC provides employment and income for workers and their families. However, successful foreign investments also include sustainable recruitment and training strategies of the local workforce. The results of the study support policymakers to guide and support foreign companies to develop successful Human Resource Management strategies in the host countries. Originality/value: This paper is original because due to the research design the internal factors are kept largely constant and the external influencing factors are singularly focused in detail. Therefore, this procedure makes it possible to investigate whether consistency training strategies across national borders have emerged in German companies or local arrangements have developed despite identical internal influencing factors.

Employability has become one of the most important outcomes of higher education despite it being weakly conceptualised for the sector. The lack of an accepted conceptualisation to address students' and graduates' employability results in difficulties when comparing research findings and therefore in assessing quality in higher education provision. This paper addresses this gap in the conceptualisation of employability and adapts an established framework so that it aligns with the higher education sector. Employability is defined as 'the ability to find, keep and progress in graduate employment'. A holistic framework composed of four categories ('individual factors'; 'individual circumstances'; 'enabling support system'; 'labour market') is used to classify and measure employability. This allows for an understanding of how specific initiatives enhance the employability of students and graduates, and suggests ways to measure this impact. Also, the limitations of HEIs to impact students' employability are addressed using the framework. The examples of Germany and England show how differences in employability occur due to differences in the surrounding labour market. The paper concludes that in a complex and holistic discussion it is necessary to highlight the various indicators, including the labour market, which were used to report more nuanced aspects of employability.

The aim of this article is to show the increased relevance of soft skills in a continuously changing environment. A research was carried out to examine and compare students' and employers' perceptions regarding the importance of soft skills in different European countries. Results show that 86% of respondents indicate an increased emphasis on soft skills over the last 5-10 years and that companies consider soft skills more important than students/graduates. Furthermore, major differences have also been identified in the ranking of the 20 soft skills listed in this paper, indicating different levels of priorities. This paper suggests that companies and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) need to work together not only to increase students' awareness of the importance of soft skills but also to guide them in taking individual responsibility to acquire and develop these essential skills in order to continuously adapt to the changing labour market and improve their employability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity to examine the initial policies developed by Australian, Canadian, English, German, Greek and Irish governments to limit the spread of the virus. This has revealed governments' conceptualisation of the early childhood sector and its workforce. This paper argues that neoliberal ideology and neoliberal imaginaries have already influenced the early childhood sector globally. During the pandemic, the choices that governments made at the outset of the pandemic has allowed their priorities and underlying ideology to be more transparent. Using an ethnographic methodology, early childhood researchers from each of the six countries, examined their individual governments policy responses and the effects on the early childhood sector during its initial months (between March and June 2020). The authors consider the extent to which this may have implications for the sector in how it should continue its ongoing pursuit of professionalisation of the sector.

With growing numbers of university graduates, the choice of academic programs has gained in importance to enter the labor market successfully. Simultaneously, the link between the field of study and actual professional career is becoming increasingly blurry. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of these relations and to position geography in this wide spectrum. We develop a conceptual framework to systematically categorize the relations between academic programs and their associated labor markets. We employ this framework in a most-different-case design to quantitatively analyze the influence of the field on the graduates' career prospects, using student records of several German universities linked with administrative biographical data from social security records. We find evidence that the influence of the field of study on full-time employment and wage is substantial, controlling for various factors. Geographers do face difficulties on the labor market, but the demand for their core competencies -- interdisciplinary, spatially specific and sustainability-related thinking -- is rising through current societal developments. Moreover, we find some indication that those performance gaps are not an exceptional phenomenon of geographers but also apply to graduates of different fields of study with multidimensional and indirect links to the associated labor markets.

The proposition that international students are not only sojourners but future immigrants has become well established in public policy. While education and immigration policy have become more intertwined, they continue to be analysed as separate spheres of influence. This paper compares Australia, Canada, and Germany, which between them host nearly 20% of all globally mobile students and where a nexus between international student and immigration policy has emerged. Using critical discourse analysis, a comparative case study design and based on a systematic literature review of over 300 studies published from 1990 to 2018, the findings revealed three ostensibly paradoxical discourses, which are discussed using the new term 'discursive pairings'. First, international students are selected for success but remain vulnerable to policy shifts that may exclude them and cause them to 'fail'. Second, international students are retained to fill economic shortages, but face difficulties being accepted on the labour market. Third, international students help build national reputation yet have been known to be exploited and subject to discrimination. The contradictions that emerge in the discourses bring into question the 'ideal immigrant' framing of international students, demonstrating that their role, acceptance, and ability to integrate into host countries is far from assured.

Collective training systems are based on the cooperation of multiple public and private stakeholders in order to work. However, such cooperation is not self-sustaining and depends, for instance, on public policies, capable intermediary organisations and shared logics of action. In this conceptual paper, we first review the political economy literature on cooperation in collective skill formation and find that it has given insufficient attention to the systematic comparative analysis of cooperation at the decentralised level as well as the actual social practices of cooperation. The paper then develops a multidisciplinary analytical framework that allows future research to examine decentralised cooperation at the regional, sectoral and occupational levels more systematically. This framework is grounded in a synthesis of three strands of empirical research on vocational education and training, namely the comparative political economy literature on governance, corporatism and coordination, institutional labour and societal economics as well as the educational science literature.

Germany and Canada differ significantly regarding their migration policy as well as the structures of the national labour markets and their educational systems. This paper aims to analyse how these differences affect the labour market outcomes of immigrants and the usability of foreign qualifications and work experiences by using the health and ICT sectors as example. The comparison focuses on the question how qualifications and work experience serve as signals and are screened for in the recruiting process of enterprises. The results show clear differences as well as several commonalities between the two compared countries.

Across Europe, assumptions are often made within the academic literature and by some social commentators that students have come to understand the purpose of higher education (HE) in increasingly instrumental terms. This is often linked to processes of marketisation and neo-liberalisation across the Global North, in which the value of HE has come to be associated with economic reward and labour market participation and measured through a relatively narrow range of metrics. It is also associated with the establishment, in 2010, of the European Higher Education Area, which is argued to have brought about the refiguration of European universities around an Anglo-American model. Scholars have contended that students have become consumer-like in their behaviour and preoccupied by labour market outcomes rather than processes of learning and knowledge generation. Often, however, such claims are made on the basis of limited empirical evidence, or a focus on policies and structures rather than the perspectives of students themselves. In contrast, this paper draws on a series of 54 focus groups with 295 students conducted in six European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain). It shows how understandings of the purpose of HE are more nuanced than much of the extant literature suggests and vary, at least to some extent, by both nation-state and higher education institution. Alongside viewing the purpose of HE as preparing them for the labour market, students emphasised the importance of tertiary-level study for personal growth and enrichment, and societal development and progress. These findings have implications for policy and practice. In particular, the broader purposes of HE, as articulated by the students in this study, should be given greater recognition by policymakers, those teaching in HE, and the wider public instead of, as is often the case, positioning students as consumers, interested in only economic gain.

In this paper, we employ a comparative life course approach for Canada and Germany to unravel the relationships among general and vocational educational attainment and different life course activities, with a focus on labour market and income inequality by gender. Life course theory and related concepts of 'time,' 'normative patterns,' 'order and disorder,' and 'discontinuities' are used to inform the analyses. Data from the "Paths on Life's Way" (Paths) project in British Columbia, Canada and the German "Pathways from Late Childhood to Adulthood (LifE)" which span 28 and 33 years, respectively, are employed to examine life trajectories from leaving school to around age 45. Sequence analysis and cluster analyses portray both within and between country differences -- and in particular gender differences -- in educational attainment, employment, and other activities across the life course which has an impact on ultimate labour market participation and income levels. 'Normative' life courses that follow a traditional order correspond with higher levels of full-time work and higher incomes; in Germany more so than Canada, these clusters are male dominated. Clusters characterised by 'disordered' and 'discontinuous' life courses in both countries are female dominated and associated with lower income levels.

Activation policies are widely adopted to encourage labour market participation of unemployed youth, and yet they are poorly understood and monitored with regard to the causal mechanisms unfolding through their implementation. Activation schemes are often based on the carrot-and-stick logic informed by microeconomic job search theory, but activation occurs through processes which are far more complex and comprises elements of career identity and capability development, among others. This paper is the first to provide an in-depth exploration of the processes of attitudinal and behavioural change experienced by unemployed youth over the course of their participation in different activation programmes. Seven phases of change emerged from the analysis, namely vocational availability, self-testing, self-knowledge, self-confidence, goal-orientation, vocational activity and perseverance. For each of these phases, we identify drivers of change from both within and outside the intervention sphere, and discuss them in their implications for research and practice.

In light of a global higher education expansion, the paper analyses the historic-structural conditions of this development for the German state(s) after World War II. Building on Talcott Parsons citizenship patterns, the analysis centres on two core institutions of the German higher education system: the state-organized system of entitlement ("Berechtigungswesen") and the civil right for access to higher education. The entitlement system established a unique form of vertical and horizontal correspondence between higher education and the labour market. It allowed for a successful transition from university to work ("academization"). As a state monopoly, it also hampered rapid expansion. The civil right to access mediated and restricted efforts to constrain the expansion in Western Germany. Its absence in Eastern Germany lead to contractions after political will changed. A large part of the post-World War II expansion in Germany can be explained through the interplay of the two core institutions. The partial dismantling of the entitlement system after 1998, has led to severe degree differentiation and change. Yet so far, employment fields still consistently adapt to the credential pressure from the expanding public research university.

Dropping out of the educational system has marked negative consequences in the labour market. Dropping out is followed by an early termination that does not necessarily mean leaving the educational system without graduating. Trainees may reassess their initial choice by starting another vocational education and training (VET) programme and preserve their labour market chances when graduating. This paper examines the factors that drive the decision to stop out (start new vocational training) after an early termination. The analysis is based on a data set for VET in Germany (Ausbildungspanel Saarland) that contains detailed information on the VET careers and labour market outcomes of almost 3000 apprentices who terminated their education early. The results show that approximately 71 percent of apprentices continue with another VET programme after a termination. Termination at an early stage of VET and training in a small establishment are more likely to lead to stopping out than to dropping out. Stopouts who terminate their contracts during an early stage of their VET programme are more likely to change their occupation and obtain a formal VET degree. The results suggest that dissatisfaction with VET must be recognized at an early stage in order for students to take appropriate measures with the aim of graduation.

This paper describes and discusses findings from an explorative study on multilingualism among university staff. In a project conducted in the University of Hamburg, 661 members of staff in administrative and technical roles have participated in a survey on their multilingual repertoires, on the usage of different languages as well as multilingual language practices in their daily work routine. The theoretical framework is informed by economic considerations on the value of languages (Grin, F. (2003). Language planning and economics. "Current Issues in Language Planning," 4(1), 1-66) as well as sociolinguistic work on language and employability (Duchêne, A., & Heller, M. (Eds.). (2012). "Routledge critical studies in multilingualism: Vol. 1. Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit." New York: Routledge; Piller, I. (2016). "Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics" (1st ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press). Among other things, the descriptive statistics firstly exhibit a wide range of multilingual resources within the workforce with over 60 different languages that are spoken by the participants. Secondly, an extensive and regular usage of languages other than German (LOTG) can be seen with over 75% of the participants indicating to make regular use other languages at work. Thirdly, generally positive attitudes towards the usage of LOTG can be observed. Further analysis and a critical discussion, however, reveals that LOTG usage remains limited to using English in the vast majority of instances, reinforcing the hegemonic role of English (and in some cases French, Spanish and Italian) and disregarding actual linguistic diversity and migrant languages.

This paper presents one of the first cross-nationally comparative studies on the economic and social returns to grit (perseverance and passion for long-term goals). Specifically, we investigated whether grit incrementally predicted objective (income) and subjective (job satisfaction) career success over and above cognitive skills and educational attainment; whether grit's association with career success was moderated by individual characteristics; whether grit's associations with career success varied across countries; and whether this variation could be explained by labour market conditions (unemployment rates). Multi-group structural equation models with data from 6,738 respondents from 19 countries revealed that grit was incrementally associated with income and job satisfaction in some but not all countries. Grit's effect sizes were mostly modest, yet there were some indications for variations by education and labour market conditions. Overall, these findings suggest that the associations between grit and career success are not uniform but vary across individuals and contexts.

Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which can define who academics are (subjectivation) and what they are worth (valuation). The question of this paper is what institutional categorizations such as status and salaries can tell us about academic subject positions and their valuation. By comparing formal status systems and salary scales in France with those in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany, this paper reveals the constraints of institutional categorization systems on academic careers. Special attention is given to the French system of status categories which is relatively homogeneous and restricts the competitive valuation of academics between institutions. The comparison shows that academic systems such as the U.S. which are characterized by a high level of heterogeneity typically present more negotiation opportunities for the valuation of academics. From a discursive perspective, institutional categories, therefore, can reflect the ways in which academics are valuated in the inter-institutional job market, by national bureaucracies or in professional oligarchies.

Compared with England, where new implementations and programmes in the education system are often introduced at a striking pace, the German education system seems to be rather stable in its features and less dynamic in terms of reform and change. Hence, a phenomenon called "reform bottleneck" ("Reformstau") has often been observed. This also applies to the field of Vocational Education and Training (VET), where the dual apprenticeship system with its traditional structural characteristics is still the central institution to prepare young people for work and employment. Although fundamental changes in the system as a result of sudden reform processes have not happened in recent decades, subtle developments have influenced the German VET system and its functioning. The specific legal and institutional construction of the dual apprenticeship system with its two main and interrelated features, federalism and corporatism, is the backbone of the specific approaches of policy-making and governance in German VET. This paper provides an overview of the institutional and legal characteristics of the dual apprenticeship system and discusses the associated approaches of policy-making and governance. Considering the different responsibilities of the public and the private sphere, contextual features of the labour market and of the school system, the paper analyses political reform initiatives, changing stakeholder interests and configurations (in particular of the so-called social partners), and their relevance for the functioning and development of the German dual apprenticeship system.