The job opportunities of highly and low-skilled young people have grown further apart since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. Young people entering the labor market now find a job slightly faster on average than in 2019. But that is mainly due to the increased opportunities for university graduates and HBO graduates. Lower educated young people find it more difficult to find work.
That is the conclusion of SEO Economic Research and the Verwey-Jonker Institute in a report published on Tuesday. The institutes looked at the data of all 470,000 young people aged 18 to 30 who entered the labor market this year, from Statistics Netherlands. They compared them with young starters from 2019 and 2020.
Also read: Corona support resumed, no more dynamics in the labor market
The chance of having a substantial job within nine months of completing your education grew most for young people with a university bachelor’s degree (+8 percentage points), followed by young people with a university master’s and HBO bachelor’s degree (both +2 percentage points) . For the research bureau, a substantial job is considered to be if someone has a job for at least three days, with or without several employers.
Practical education
The most disadvantaged were young people who had completed vocational education or special secondary education. Their job prospects decreased by 2 percentage points. For MBO graduates, the job opportunity fell less, by an average of less than a full percentage point. “Young people who already had fewer opportunities on the labor market have deteriorated even further,” concludes SEO director Bas ter Weel.
Even HBO and WO graduates who followed a course in a corona-sensitive sector saw their job opportunities increase sharply. For example, the job opportunity for someone with a higher hotel school (HBO) diploma increased by 3 percentage points. For MBO graduates with a hospitality education (at levels 2 and 3), this decreased by 1 to 6 percentage points. It could be easier for higher educated people to work in a different sector than the one they were trained for, the researchers suggest.
The report is part of a long-term study into the consequences of corona for young workers. A year ago, SEO and the Verwey-Jonger Institute noted that the inequality between highly and poorly educated young people had increased in the first corona months, until June 2020.
Also read: Young people hit hard by the corona crisis
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