Arbeitsmarkteinstieg und räumliche Mobilität von Hochschulabsolvent*innen

authored by: Christian Teichert
supervised by: Ingo Matthias Liefner
Abstract: There is a growing demand for (higher) education and qualified human capital in knowledge-based economies, with human capital being crucial for economic growth and regional development. The scarcity of skilled workers and the simultaneous increase in the requirements of jobs lead to educational expansion. However, the exploitation of human capital is tied to the application of its respective skills and knowledge in the labor market. The societal and individual financial returns to education also only take effect upon successful entry into the labor market. Accordingly, it is the task of research in higher education, among others, to illuminate the transition phase into the labor market from individual, societal and economical perspectives. Against this background, this dissertation has two research goals. Firstly, it aims to address the empirical challenges that previous studies face by developing a novel and unique dataset. Secondly, the dissertation aims to incorporate the hitherto neglected interplay of three factors of labor market entry (work experience, field of study and mobility) into both empirical models and theoretical frameworks. Matching administrative student data from several German universities with employment biographies from social security records at the individual level enabled the creation of a panel data set of graduates. Using this panel, the labor market entry as well as early career paths and their respective success factors are analyzed in depth. Key findings suggest that labor market experiences and mobility patterns have significant effects on labor market entry variables such as the geographical location, the duration of the transition from university to employment, wages and the adequacy of employment. However, strength and direction of these effects depend on the type, specificity, location and timing of work experiences. In this dissertation, a conceptual categorization of the relation between fields of study and their associated labor markets allows the identification of important effects of the field of study on labor market performances. In more detail, the labor market entry of graduates from different fields, i.e. geography, business, computer sciences, is systematically compared, and differences as well as their predictors are quantified. Results suggest that geographers perform worse than their business and computer science peers do. However, this is not a problem of geographers per se but rather due to the indirect and multidimensional links between some fields of study and their respective labor markets. The insights gained through this dissertation help to better understand the mechanisms underlying the labor market entry of graduates, leading to practical implications in several domains such as the planning of educational trajectories by individuals, the improvement of skilled labor recruitment strategies by firms, and the decision-making in regional policy.
Organisation(s): Economic Geography Section
Type: Doctoral thesis
No. of pages: 146
Publication date: 2021
Publication status: Published
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.15488/10465 (Access: Open)