Analysis of the benefits of internships for Austrian university graduates including relevant mediation paths

Abstract

Internships are a widespread opportunity for university graduates to gain labour market experience during their studies and to acquire job-related skills. However, it is largely unclear how great the actual benefit of these internships for entering the labour market is and whether income, job mismatch and satisfaction are significantly influenced. Furthermore, there is insufficient research on whether compulsory and voluntary internships have the same effect or whether there are differences. Using data from Austrian university graduates, we quantify the interrelationships of different types of internships by means of linear and ordinal logistic regressions, thus showing that only voluntary internships are associated with better labour market outcomes, whereas this does not apply to compulsory internships. In further analyses, we also estimate the influence of internships that is mediated by acquired skills and thus demonstrate that up to 47% of the correlations can be explained by skills.