The role of vocational specificity and skill demand in explaining long-term labour market outcomes of people with VET

Vocational education and training (VET) programmes in Switzerland typically include both occupation-specific and general teaching, and the balance between the two has a significant influence on graduates’ later careers. We spoke to Professor Irene Kriesi about her research into how the nature of VET programmes affects career trajectories.

The majority of young people in Switzerland go into vocational education and training, through which they acquire the skills and knowledge that will help them enter the labour force. While there are different types of vocational education and training (VET), most young people go into so-called dual VET, which is company-based. “This means that they spend maybe 3-4 days in a training company, and 1-2 days in vocational school,” says Irene Kriesi, Professor at the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET). The nature of this training, and the balance between occupation-specific training and more general education in VET programmes, has a strong influence on young people’s later career trajectories, a topic of great interest to Professor Kriesi. “These young people have different labour market opportunities, depending on the type of programme they go through, as most jobs require a specific credential,” she explains.

There are around 230 different VET programmes in the Swiss system, covering a wide variety of different occupations. Although all programmes focus strongly on occupation-specific skills, there is some degree of heterogeneity in the balance between general and occupation-specific teaching. While in some training programmes young people spend most of their time in the firm, and focus strongly on occupational-specific skills, others are different. “There are training programmes with more general education and less vocation-specific training. There are also differences on exams, which affects how training is organised, as well as differences in terms of the breadth of the programme,” explains Professor Kriesi. This has a major impact on young people’s career prospects, as Professor Kriesi says the Swiss training system and the labour market are closely linked. “The type of training young people do determines to quite a strong extent how they enter the labour market,” she continues.

Digital literacy learning objectives in Swiss VET occupations.

Career trajectories

An occupation-specific training programme may put young people in a good position to enter the labour market, but it may also affect their subsequent career trajectory and ability to move into a different job later on, a topic which Professor Kriesi is investigating in a research project based at SFUVET. The core database used in this research is the Swiss labour force survey, while Professor Kriesi and her colleagues are also using data from a number of other sources. “We intend to extend our analysis using the TREE (Transition from Education to Employment) data, which is a longtitudinal survey. We’re also working with unemployment data,” she outlines. Researchers are also using data from the Swiss job monitor, which holds a representative

The Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training SFUVET is Switzerland’s expert organisation for vocational education and training. Interactive skills learning objectives in Swiss VET occupations

sample of job adverts. “With this dataset we can measure the labour market demand for people with specific credentials. That’s quite important in order to control for labour market demand,” explains Professor Kriesi.

A further source of data is a database created at SFUVET, in which information from ordinances and different curricula frameworks have been collected. A lot of indicators have been collected on different VET programmes. “This includes things like how many hours of general education they have a week in vocational school, how many lessons are in the local language and how many lessons are in foreign languages. Data-mining techniques are also used to measure IT literacy for example, or communication and interaction skills,” says Professor Kriesi. This provides solid foundations for researchers to investigate how the balance between general and specific training in VET programmes affects labour market outcomes, all against a backdrop of evolving demand for specific skills from employers. “Our hypothesis was that the ability to adapt to changing circumstances depends on the skill bundle taught in VET,” continues Professor Kriesi.

Swiss labour market

The Swiss labour market has in general remained fairly stable for the last few decades, yet some jobs are disappearing due to automation. However, Professor Kriesi says the vast majority of training programmes have adapted, while new jobs are emerging in the modern economy as new technologies are developed. “New occupations are being created all the time,” she says. There is a

We wanted to analyse those 230 different training

occupations, and find out any differences regarding the extent to which they teach these general skills.

In a second step, we wanted to look at whether that has

an effect on graduates’ later careers.

The evidence suggests that young people who undergo very occupation-specific training find it easier to get a matching job, and they have higher earnings when they initially enter the labour market. However, those who have higher proportions of general education have steeper earnings gains once they have entered the labour market and more occupational mobility. “This may be because they find it easier to adapt to changing circumstances,” says Professor Kriesi. Skills like knowledge of foreign languages, IT literacy and communication skills are also becoming increasingly important in the labour market, now Professor Kriesi aims to assess the extent to which they are addressed in Swiss VET programmes. “We wanted to analyse those 230 different training occupations, and find out any differences regarding the extent to which they teach these skills,” she outlines. “In a second step, we wanted to look at whether that has an effect on graduates’ later careers.”

This includes analysing people’s earnings later in their careers, assessing their mobility in the labour market, and looking at how often they become unemployed. Researchers have found that training in IT literacy pays off in these terms, even if it may not be immediately relevant to a career as a hairdresser or chef for example. “The more IT literacy is taught in a VET programme, the steeper the earnings trajectories of the graduates,” says Professor Kriesi. General communication skills are also important, particularly when young people face a tough labour market. “If demand for people with a particular skill isn’t very high, then it’s really important that young people have picked up those interaction skills during their training,” stresses Professor Kriesi. “Those people with good communication and language skills and general knowledge are less negatively affected when the labour market situation is difficult.”

trade-off to consider for all VET training occupations, whether they are relatively new or long established. “We have seen that the more specific the training is, the more time the trainees spend really learning very narrow, occupation-specific skills, the easier it is for young people to enter the labour market,” explains Professor Kriesi. “However, in the long run, if young people want to stay flexible, and to be able to adapt to changing labour market opportunities, then it’s an advantage to have a more general education.”

This trade-off should be an important consideration for policy-makers looking at the future of VET programmes. At the moment Swiss policy-makers are primarily focused on giving young people good opportunities to enter the labour market, which is clearly important, yet Professor Kriesi believes it’s important to also consider their prospects for further progression. “Our impression is that educational policy-makers sometimes aren’t sufficiently aware that while entering the labour market is important, it’s also important to look at what these young people need to go on to have successful careers later on,” she says.

THE ROLE OF VOCATIONAL SPECIFICITY

The role of vocational specificity and skill demand in explaining long-term labour market outcomes of people with VET Project Objectives

The project investigates how mid and long-term labour market outcomes of individuals who completed Swiss vocational education and training (VET) depend on the interplay between the occupation-specific skill demand and the type and composition of general and occupation-specific skills provided by their training programmes. In other words, we ask how the long-term usability of skills taught in VET programmes differs within and across occupational fields and leads to unequal employment and career prospects.

Project Funding

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant number: 10001A_182702

Project Partners

• In cooperation with: University of Bern,

Dr Stefan Sacchi

Contact Details

Principal Investigator: Prof Dr Irene Kriesi, Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training SFUVET Kirchlindachstr. 79, 3052 Zollikofen, Switzerland T: +41 58 458 28 27 E: irene.kriesi@ehb.swiss W: https://www.sfuvet.swiss/project/ specificity-and-skill-demand-SNSF

Professor Irene Kriesi Dr Miriam Grønning Dr Stefan Sacchi

Prof Dr Irene Kriesi is head of the research area on “Strategic planning of the VET/PET system” at the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training in Switzerland. Her research interests are educational trajectories, school-to-work transitions, occupational careers and social inequality, with a specific focus on gender inequalities. Dr Miriam Grønning is a researcher at SFUVET. She earned her doctorate in the sociology department at Leibniz University in Hannover. Dr Stefan Sacchi is a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Sociology at the University of Berne.