Employment of vocational graduates: Still a slough or already a ford?

Abstract

The study is devoted to employment of recent vocational graduates. The proportion of middle-school graduates in vocational enrollment has increased essentially over the past decade, which indicates that the choice of vocational trajectories, on average, is now made at lower age. It was established based on the Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations that on average 44 percent of students combined work and study in 2010-2015. Vocational students mostly combine work and study because of financial constraints, their employment rarely being related to their field of study. Later on, when making a transition from education to the labor market, vocational graduates have to accept one of the first job offers as they cannot afford a longer job search. The second part of the study draws upon the findings from the 2010- 2015 sampling survey of graduate employment administered by the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). It is shown that combining work and study has positive effects on employability of graduates as well as on the size of their starting salaries. In addition, self-funded students and those who combine study with major-related work are more likely to get employed in their field of study after graduation. Education-job mismatch among graduates is found to entail income "penalties".