The effectiveness of vocational secondary education on entry-level job outcomes in Japan: Safety net for low-educated youth in a vocationally weak educational system

The aim of this paper is to analyze the sociodemographic compositions and labor market entry of low-educated youth in Japan. The paper specifically focuses on whether vocational education provides a safety net for labor market insecurities during an era of educational expansion. While past literature has shown that vocational education contributes to occupationally specific skills and a smooth transition from school to work, less is known about its effectiveness when low-educated youth become a minority group. The case of Japan provides a unique perspective, given its historically low youth unemployment rate and strong connections between schools and employers, despite its academically oriented high school education system. The 2015 Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey in Japan is used to evaluate trends in vocational education and their impact on employment. The key variables under examination are entry-level job outcomes. The results show that, over the past decades, high school graduates in Japan have become a more disadvantaged group than university graduates. Among high school graduates, those from general schools tend to have more advantageous sociodemographic backgrounds than their counterparts from vocational schools. Despite the limitations, vocational high school graduates have been better rewarded in the transition to work throughout recent decades. Furthermore, the labor market premium for vocational school graduates remains stable even after accounting for the influence of school networks. Sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of these effects. The implications of the findings are discussed within the context of the skill formation regime in Japan.