Youth Overeducation in Europe

Less favorable outcomes—such as overeducation—early in the careers of younger workers may impact negatively on future labor market success, so it is important to understand the incidence of youth overeducation, its evolution over time, and the drivers of youth labor market mismatch. Most research has focused on examining the incidence and impacts of overeducation. This chapter represents one of the few attempts to examine patterns of overeducation within countries, while the adoption of a time-series approach enables the identification of common trends across Europe. Overeducation rates in Europe are converging upward over time, and the general pattern of overeducation is linked across many countries, suggesting that the phenomenon responds in a similar way to external shocks and, consequently, may react in similar ways to appropriate policy interventions. This chapter finds that youth overeducation is driven by the composition of education provision, aggregate labor demand, and labor market flexibility.

What happens to young people who move to another country to find work?

This chapter analyzes the labor market integration of South–North and East–West migrants, together with intra-European and non-European Union migrants, vis-à-vis native peers in main European destinations. The analysis considers individual characteristics and labor market outcomes by migrant origins. Labor market outcomes are estimated, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and for country-fixed and year effects. Using interaction effects, the chapter estimates whether the work-related outcomes of young migrants differ vis-à-vis native peers. The econometric analysis using pooled European Social Surveys (2002–2015) suggests that individual characteristics explain part of the migrant–native peer differences. Particularly, migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe exhibit important gaps vis-à-vis native peers regarding unemployment, contract type, and overqualification. Overall, migrant youth and women seem to be in vulnerable situations in destination labor markets. In addition to nondiscriminatory treatment, transparent competence screening and smooth skills transferability could alleviate such youth and gender vulnerabilities.

Youth transitions and job quality

This chapter explores how youth unemployment, discontinuous employment, and working in low-quality jobs affect individuals’ subsequent occupational conditions. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal EU-SILC data (2005–2012) for five countries, the chapter distinguishes between different types of good and bad jobs, examining the effect of family background on successful transitions. Findings show that young people from families of higher social class have better chances of making transitions into good-quality jobs than do youth from lower class families. Securing a good entry job is crucial to achieving a successful outcome, whereas experiencing either brief periods of unemployment or employment continuity has limited effects. These mechanisms are evident across all countries considered. The findings reinforce established knowledge on patterns of stratification, evidencing a direct channel of social transmission of inequalities through education and an indirect channel through better labor market entries.

How can young people’s employment quality be assessed dynamically?

This chapter adopts a dynamic approach to the study of youth labor market integration. It focuses on individual trajectories (i.e., sequences of employment statuses) and considers the timing, order, and length of employment and jobless spells. It uses EU-SILC longitudinal data (2006–2012) for 17 countries to depict youth employment outcomes in two different phases: labor market entry and approximately 5 years after leaving education. The extent to which the experience of a certain trajectory type differs by gender, education level, and across countries is analyzed. Results show that although males and females have similar chances of accessing paid employment rapidly, women’s labor market conditions deteriorate over the following few years in terms of both security and success. Stricter rules on the use of temporary contracts tend to reduce the probability of fragmented trajectories in both phases, narrowing the gender and education gaps with respect to employment and income security.

Are the work values of the younger generations changing?

This chapter analyzes whether work values differ between birth cohorts, age groups, and time periods. Using large cross-national surveys from more than 30 countries, it is shown that the centrality of work is highest in the middle age groups and significantly lower during 2005–2009 than in the 1990s. However, there are no detectable gaps between birth cohorts. Thus, in contemporary Europe, the generations are not divided significantly with regard to their work values so that rather than pointing to generational differences, the lack of them should be emphasized. From a policy standpoint, this means that the generational differences often referred to in public debates and used in political discourses are a myth. The results presented in this chapter imply that if sound European Union policies are implemented to cope with youth unemployment, they will not fail because of generation-specific attitudes.

Europe’s promise for jobs?

This chapter examines the labor market integration of recent migrant youth from Central and Eastern Europe (EU8) countries, Bulgaria and Romania (EU2), Southern Europe, and the remaining European Union in the German and UK labor markets. The chapter measures levels of employment, income, marginal employment, fixed-term employment, (solo) self-employment, and the skills/qualification mismatch of each group compared to nationals before and after the financial crisis. Despite institutional differences, young EU citizens are well integrated into the respective labor markets (especially in the United Kingdom) in terms of employment rates. However, EU youth migrants’ qualitative labor market integration seems to mirror the existing stratification across regions of Europe: EU8 and EU2 citizens often work in precarious and nonstandard employment, youth from Southern Europe take a middle position, and youth from the remaining EU countries do as well or better on several indicators compared to their native peers.

The worklessness legacy

This chapter examines how intergenerational transmission of worklessness varies according to the gender of parents and their children in 26 European countries. The analysis draws on EU-SILC 2011 cross-sectional data, using a sample of young people aged 25–34 years for whom information about parental background characteristics when the young people were aged approximately 14 years is available. Fathers’ and mothers’ employment conditions during their children’s adolescence were expected to impact differently on the labor outcomes of sons and daughters, with cross-country differences depending on national-specific socioeconomic structures and institutional contexts. Empirical findings suggest that having had a workless mother increases both sons’ and daughters’ likelihood of being workless at approximately age 30 years in all but the Nordic countries. Fathers’ employment matters for both sons and daughters in Mediterranean and Eastern countries, only for daughters in English-speaking countries, and only for sons in Nordic countries.

Do business start-ups create high-quality jobs for young people?

Since the onset of the recent economic crisis, there has been renewed interest among policymakers across Europe in measures to stimulate self-employment and entrepreneurship as an alternative to unemployment. However, fundamental questions about policies that promote self-employment, especially among young people, remain unanswered. For instance, do such policies create new jobs or just promote new forms of precarious, poor-quality employment? This chapter finds that for some young people, self-employment is an option that offers high-quality jobs. Young self-employed people report that they can use and further develop their skills, and they appreciate the high degrees of autonomy and flexibility. However, the actual volume of jobs created through self-employment is low. Moreover, job quality is impaired by poor social protection, with severe negative consequences especially in the long term. Policies are needed to address the risks associated with self-employment, especially in relation to unemployment, health care, and pension benefits.

What are the employment prospects for young Estonian and Slovak return migrants?

This chapter addresses patterns of return migration in Estonia and Slovakia. It investigates the selection of emigrants who decide to return home and analyzes their characteristics compared to emigrants who remain abroad and to fellow nationals who did not emigrate, as well as the labor market status of young returnees after re-entering the domestic labor market. The comparative analysis of the two national Labor Force Survey samples suggests that among young returnees, level of education has no association with the decision to return home. An education–occupation mismatch affects the decision to return among young and highly educated Estonian migrants, whereas no such effect is found for young Slovak returnees. The analysis of post-return labor market status reveals that both Estonian and Slovak returnees are more likely to face short-term unemployment after re-entering the domestic labor market than are emigrants who remain abroad or people who stayed at home.

How do youth labor flows differ from those of older workers?

This chapter analyzes youth labor market dynamics, their structure, and their policy implications, focusing on selected European Union countries during the various stages of the Great Recession and comparing flows between labor market statuses for young people (aged 16–34 years) with those for prime-age individuals (aged 35–54 years). The flow approach views labor market transitions as a state-dependent process, simultaneously involving all movements of individuals between employment, unemployment, and inactivity. The main result is that young workers are more likely to move between employment and unemployment in both directions. This is instructive for assessing the gap in the labor market prospects of the two age groups and particularly for understanding differences in the evolution of youth and prime-age unemployment rates. The socioeconomic determinants of transitions between employment and unemployment in both directions are estimated, with the aim of illustrating the depth of age-based labor market segmentation and marginalization.