The education-to-work transition

First steps of the 2017 Generation into the labour market : a statistical portrait

The latest wave of the so-called Génération surveys carried out by Céreq to analyse the school-to-work transition of young people, is pursuing its objective of describing and understanding the first steps into the labour market of young people who left the education system in 2017.

By alternating observations at a given date and analyses of longitudinal data, more than a hundred indicators make it possible to update, consolidate or contradict perceptions of a given generation's entry into the labour market.

Céreq's new publication Quand l'école est finie. Premiers pas dans la vie active de la Génération 2017  (in french) provides a multidimensional insight into their pathway through the labour market during their first three years of working life.

Just released, QEEF

Who are the young people entering the labour market?

  • Nearly 80% have a baccalaureate (78%) and nearly 50% have a higher education degree (47%). Non-graduates account for 12% of school leavers, i.e. over 90,000 young people.
  • Graduates with 5 years of higher education (EQF level 7) are four times more likely to have their mother working as an an executive (35%) than non-graduates (9%). ​
  • ​8 out of 10 young people with a Bac+5 degree (EQF level 7) are graduates of a "general baccalaureate".
  • Almost 60% of the 2017 generation (440,000 young people) continued their studies after the baccalaureate, but 22% (97,000) of them failed in higher education.
  • More than a quarter of young people (27%) report having had a paid job during their studies. For more than half of them, it was a regular job ('over 8 hours a week'). This is more likely to be the case for university graduates. For two thirds of them, this job had no connection with their studies. 44% stated that this experience disrupted their academic course, especially when their job was unrelated to their studies.
  • For 78% of young people, this regular employment enabled them to acquire useful skills for the future.  For more than a third of them (38%), these experiences influenced their career plans.

 

What kind of integration? What are the employment dynamics?

  • 39% of the respondents have had only 1 employer whereas 51% of PhDs in health, 58% of engineering graduates have had only 1 employer.
  • 10% of the generation has never been employed.  35% of non-graduates.
  • Mobility mainly concerns Bac (EQF level 4) and BTS-DUT graduates (EQF level 5), 30 to 33% of whom have experienced at least three employment sequences.
  • Among the 90% (675,000) young people of the 2017 generation who held at least one job after leaving thier education and training, 63% had a fixed-term contract and 37%  had an open-ended contract in their first employment. The rates of transition from a fixed-term job to an open-ended job vary greatly depending on the qualification: 24% among non-graduates, 59% among graduates of long-cycle higher education.
  • Young people experience both promotion and downgrading. During a 3-year period, one in five young people were promoted and 7% were downgraded.
  • After 3 years, at equivalent levels, women's income is lower than that of men. For the whole generation, the median net monthly income is €1,250 for women compared to €1,350 for men.

 

When young people are not in employment...

  • Unemployment is strongly related to the level of education: 50% of non-graduates experienced more than 3 months of unemployment before finding their first job, compared to only 16% of university graduates.
  • 17 % of the respondents returned to education in the 3 years following their completion of the initial education and training in 2017. Most of these are young people who stopped their studies because they were not accepted on a training course and who are now returning to schooling (28%). Those returning to education are mostly students with a baccalaureate or without a higher education degree (32%).
  • "Civic service" is a pathway taken by 9% of the generation, 10% of women, 12% of young people from deprived neighbourhoods of cities and 17% of graduates from a general baccalaureate. For young people who have carried out a civic service during their first 3 years of working life, it serves as their first professional experience (excluding work placements during their studies) in 68% of cases and even represents their only employment experience in 18% of cases.

 

Quand l'école est finie : Premiers pas dans la vie active de la Génération 2017, coord. by F. Le Bayon, G. Dabet, O. Joseph and M. Olaria, 2022, Céreq enquêtes n°3. In French.

Cite this article

First steps of the 2017 Generation into the labour market : a statistical portrait, https://www.cereq.fr/en/first-steps-2017-generation-labour-market-statistical-portrait