Based on Swedish register data from 2003 to 2012, this study attempts to explain over-education and upward mobility among tertiary graduates. Rarely used explanatory factors are central in the analyses, such as 'still in study' and 'field of education'. Tertiary graduates in low-wage jobs are regarded as over-educated. The results of this work…

A fundamental shift is taking place in the way we think about the future of work and its relationship to education, training and the labour market. Until recently, expanding higher education was widely believed to result in higher earnings, reflecting an insatiable demand for knowledge workers. In the United Kingdom, this race to higher education…

Policymakers are increasingly concerned that employees need both foundational skills, such as numeracy, and soft skills to take better advantage of new technologies and adapt to changing work. In this study, we examined the relationships between the use of soft skills and occupational outcomes among a nationally representative sample of adult…

The purpose of my paper is to describe and explain the probability of staying in temporary work for young people (age 16-27) in Sweden between 1992 and 2011 and its relation to socioeconomic outcomes (low socioeconomic classification and wage). I used panel data from the Swedish Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the longitudinal integration database…

Tatarstan has been developing several public policies in favour of the Tatar language; probably the most relevant is bilingual schooling. Given this, the present research compares the monthly wage income between those who studied before, during, and after the implementation of this educational reform. Using data from the Russia Longitudinal…

Recent evidence indicates substantial heterogeneity in the returns to skills across countries, but only a few studies have explained the varying patterns in the return to skills. Using the 2013 STEP data for Ghana and Kenya, we estimate the causal effect of cognitive and noncognitive skills on a large set of labour market outcomes by controlling…

We analyse race and gender trends in the Silicon Valley technology industry from 1980 to 2015, with a focus on education, employment and wages in computer science. Racial gaps in representation are more salient among programmers than in the overall technology labour force; in addition, we document a stable or increasing gender gap across all races…

This paper examines the effects of grades from higher education on labour market outcomes. Economic theory predicts that grades are rewarded in the labour market because employers regard them as an expression of valuable skills or a signal of other sought after attributes. Social closure, however, may give reason to expect no effects. Whether good…

This article investigates the relation between the second chance of increase in formal education amongst low-educated adults in Sweden and long-term wage development. Despite the awareness of the role of education for employability and individuals' overall life chances, surprisingly few studies have investigated the wage effects of Second-Chance…

This article explains why the massification of higher education in Hong Kong has, contrary to the predictions of received wisdom, failed to enhance the upward social mobility of the youth in the city. Building upon recent literature in political science, it argues that massification can take different forms, which in turn determine the effects of…

Widened participation in post-compulsory and higher education is generally regarded as a result of the growing recognition of the internal and external benefits of higher education, which are categorised either as a private or public good. However, a question can be raised: once these incentives become less promising or less evident, will a strong…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of university and vocational education, and other influences on a variety of labour market outcomes for Australian youths aged between 16 and 25. The six labour market outcomes investigated are: occupational status, hourly and weekly earnings, employment, unemployment and full-time work. The…

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a way of equipping graduates with attributes that make them work-ready. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) require their students to go through a compulsory work place learning form (WPL) of WIL. The complications of WPL can affect HEIs' student throughput. To address this challenge, a…

The paper critically reviews the results of Korean massification in higher education (HE) and focuses on the consequences related to graduate employment. By analysing statistical data and reviewing related articles, this study explores the process of the massification of HE, investigates major factors influencing the expansion, and analyses and…

Human capital investment is a necessary condition for improving labour market outcomes in most countries. Empirical studies to investigate human capital and its linkages on the labour demand side are, however, relatively scarce due to limitations of firm-level data-sets. Using firm-level data from the Thai manufacturing sector, this paper aims to…