Labour Market Entry after Apprenticeship Training - The Impact of Characteristics of the Training Occupation

Laura Menze’s dissertation explores the labour market entry of graduates of apprenticeship training in Germany. While their vocational certificates are formally considered to be of equal value, the labour market opportunities differ substantially within this group. In her dissertation, Laura Menze asks how structural characteristics of the training occupation impact such differences. The dissertation, thus, contributes to the literature on how individual employment trajectories are structured by occupational characteristics.

In a first step, the project analyses the impact of characteristics of training occupations on the labour market opportunities directly after graduating from apprenticeship training.

The project then tries to identify distinct patterns of employment trajectories in the early employment phase until five years after graduation. The project studies if and how these patterns are structured by characteristics of the training occupation.

The project develops measures for occupational characteristics and merges these measures with individual-level data on employment trajectories derived from the adult cohort of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS).