Country Patterns of Labour Market Entry and Early Career

The paper intends to find similarities and differences among 18 countries of the REFLEX and HEGESCO projects with respect to the labour market entry and early career process. Based on how close to each other or how far from each other these countries are, they will be grouped into clusters and the country types will be characterized by the typical features of labour market entry and early career of the graduates. The following features are considered in the analysis in order to develop a general typology of the 18 countries: easiness and fastness of labour market entry; match between qualification and current occupation; mobility out of first employment and unemployment experiences. Following the existing literature, two mechanisms for grouping the 18 countries can serve as basis for conceptual predictions: the connection between the educational system and the labour market as well the employment protection legislation. These approaches have been applied and tested earlier for broader circles of labour market entrants. The paper discusses these issues for the graduate labour market. Methodologically, the statistical procedure of cluster analysis will be used. The main challenge is to link the empirical findings to the conceptual predictions. Choosing the best cluster solutions is affected by the number of cases (18 nations) and by consideration for interpretations. The paper provides confirmation to the OLM – ILM distinction as well as to the relevance of the stronger or weaker EPL for the specific graduate labour market. Based on the typology derived from indicators on labour market entry and early career, the analysis reveals graduates’ situation to be the most flexible and vulnerable in Spain and Turkey, while labour market entry and early career seem to be the most favourable for graduates in Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and Estonia.