Education or qualification? Analysis of the labour market access of secondary education students

Transitions from the education system to the labour market are a key process in the lives of young people. This article explores the relative effect of educational attainment and post-compulsory schooling on various measures of labour market access in Spanish cohorts born between 1996 and 1998. To this end, logit models are used to exploit data from the most recent Survey on the Transition from Education/Training to Labour Market Insertion conducted by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics in 2019. The findings indicate that qualifications are more important in explaining employment outcomes in the first stage of young people's labour market access. Furthermore, young people who have remained in the education system at post-compulsory ages but not increased their qualifications are less likely to be active, employed, and have a permanent contract.