Vocational versus general education: Employment and earnings over the life course in Switzerland

Abstract

After the Great Recession, vocational training was strongly promoted across the OECD as a measure to fight youth unemployment. Vocational degrees may give workers a head start in the labour market. However, these degrees may also become obsolete sooner and leave older workers vulnerable to technological change. We thus compare the evolution of employment and earnings over the life course for holders of vocational and general education at the upper-secondary level. We use a cohort design for Switzerland, the OECD country with the highest share of youth undertaking vocational education. Based on the Swiss Labour Force Survey 1991–2014 and the Swiss Household Panel 1999–2015, our results show that employment prospects remain as good for vocational as for general education over the second half of workers’ careers. However, vocational education is associated with substantially lower earnings once workers enter their thirties, and this disadvantage is larger among women than men. While vocational degrees protect against unemployment, they come at the cost of flat earnings curves over the life course. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

Author Keywords

Vocational training employment education Wages Switzerland careers

Index Keywords

Employment adult female human male Article juvenile worker Vocational education education vocation career human experiment Switzerland workforce unemployment lifespan household Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Author Affiliations

Université de Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, VD, Switzerland

Funding & Acknowledgements

National Centres of Competence in Research SwissMAP

Funding text 1: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.; Funding text 2: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation . We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, SNF

Grant: RC28

Funding text 1: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.; Funding text 2: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation . We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, SNF

Funding text 1: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.; Funding text 2: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation . We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.

Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, CREST

Funding text 1: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.; Funding text 2: This paper was written within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation . We gratefully acknowledge the comments made by seminar participants in Bamberg (SLLS), Bern (RC28), Oxford (ECSR), Paris (CREST), Tallinn (ECSR), Villars (Alp-Pop) as well as the helpful inputs received from André Berchtold, Bastian Betthäuser, Thijs Bol, Julie Falcon, Ben Jann, Irene Kriesi, Rafael Lalive, Oliver Lipps, Patrick McDonald, Leen Vandecasteele as well as the editor Laura Bernardi and two anonymous reviewers.

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Vocational versus general education: Employment and earnings over the life course in Switzerland

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