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Many veterans struggle with the civilian world and the loss of identity associated with leaving the service. This research investigates the Building Heroes Charity's role in assisting service leavers transitioning to civil employment, in the United Kingdom (UK) and what can be learnt from the training and support.

An exploratory case study design was chosen to investigate the transition from military to civilian employment. The case study consisted of 12 in-depth interviews consisting of nine veterans, who had attended the Building Heroes courses and three course tutors.

The Building Heroes Charity does have an important role to fulfill in the transition of military personnel from the service to civilian work. There are positive outcomes that complement the work done by the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), but there still needs to be recognition that the needs of veterans do differ by age, transferability of competencies and the financial resources available.

The limitations of this research are the sample size is small and the majority of the veterans are from the Army. This is mostly because the Army is the largest of the services.

Though there is limited research into the employment of veterans, there is evidence to demonstrate that veterans are more likely to suffer from depression and potential homelessness than nonservice personnel. This research is unique in investigating the role of a charity whose main purpose is to improve the employability of veterans by reducing the competency skills gap between the military and construction industry.

Construction is one of Australia’s largest employers of young people and the industry is facing a major labor shortage, with young people expected to account for much of the shortfall. Surprisingly however, there been little research into the pathways for young people into construction employment. The aim of this paper is to address this gap in research by exploring whether project-based intermediaries can support the development of disadvantaged young people’s trust in the often-problematic systems which are meant to help transition them into employment in construction.

Employing an in-depth case study approach, this research mobilizes theories of personalized and generalized trust to report the results of interviews with 15 sectoral leaders; focus groups with 12 young people working in construction; and interviews with 11 young people being transitioned into construction employment through a unique project-based intermediary developed by a major Australian construction company as part of its social procurement requirements.

Findings show that project-based intermediaries can play an important trust-building role in transitioning disadvantaged young people into work in construction. They do this by bridging a young person’s strong social ties (family and friendship) and weak social ties (with government and construction industry organizations), both of which can be problematic when used in isolation to seek employment in construction. By performing a crucial bridging role between a young person’s individual self-interest in acting alone to find work and their collective interest in being part of a collaborative group, the project-based intermediary creates a new form of linking social capital, enabling social procurement policies which target young people to work while also addressing wider systemic problems in Australia’s employment systems.

This research addresses the lack of employment research into young people in construction and the paucity of theory in social procurement research more broadly. It takes an original approach in aligning theories related to a duality of personalized trust and generalized trust seen against the duality of individual intentionality and agency (self-focused) and shared intentionality and agency (group-focused). By doing so it provides new conceptual and practical insights into the important role that construction project-based intermediaries like the one studied here can play in providing innovative cross-sector and collaborative solutions to the world’s growing youth unemployment crisis.

The transition of people to the ordinary market after completing the due process of a work integration social enterprise is a critical moment that exposes their vulnerability. This paper aims to present the results of an intervention programme designed to support job search efforts and identify the main factors that contribute to this transition.

This study used a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data on the programme results were collected through administrative documentation and the Employability Factors Scale. Qualitative data were gathered using focus groups and questionnaires to understand participants’ perspectives.

The levels of employment achieved, improvement in employability and participants’ assessment provided evidence of the programme’s effectiveness. Likewise, having an individual’s support, systematisation of the program and intermediation with ordinary companies were the factors that most influenced the programme results. Therefore, this study confirms the need for personal, systematic, personalised and sustained support over time to facilitate the transition from work integrated social enterprises to ordinary markets.

There are few studies on transitioning from work integration social enterprises to ordinary companies. This study offers a unique view of implementing an employment support programme and its impact on people.

Part 2 of the Special Issue on “School-to-Work Transition Around the World: The Effect of the Pandemic Recession-Global Perspective” focuses on the global panorama of school-to-work transition (STWT). With young people constituting a significant portion of the world's population, their seamless transition from education to employment is paramount for the present and future labor force. This study explores various dimensions influencing youth's STWT worldwide, including education-job mismatch, early career outcomes, young entrepreneurs' profiles, gender and informal sector wage gaps, social capital, social network sites' usage, job attributes and returns to schooling. These insights shed light on the intricate nature of global STWT, offering valuable guidance for policymakers and practitioners. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned ideas.

The study builds on the country-specific contributions of the papers selected in the Special Issue by supporting it with additional literature. Moreover, the study reveals a more holistic and global understanding of the school-to-work transition by zooming out on the specific geographic contexts.

This paper examines the school-to-employment transition challenges in various countries. In Italy, PhD holders face wage disadvantages, especially in physics, engineering, social sciences and humanities. Education positively impacts transition speed, employability and earnings, but effects differ across birth cohorts. Italian women encounter persistent wage gaps, experiencing both a “sticky floor” and “glass ceiling” effect, and in Zambia, working while studying enhances the youth's chances of finding well-matched jobs. Albanian public sector careers rely on political connections over merit, revealing political clientelism. Russian research confirms a 20 percent gender wage gap due to occupational segregation. Polish informal workers generally earn less, with higher penalties for low-wage earners. In Australia, social network site usage yields positive and negative effects on teens' school and work balance. Global analysis reveals varying education returns, with rural areas showing lower returns and women benefiting more than men. Africa and Latin America exhibit higher education returns than Asia and Eastern Europe.

This study provides valuable insights into how various countries address the challenges of transitioning from school to work and identifies the educational and economic factors contributing to a successful transition. Given that extended transition periods, high rates of youth unemployment and high NEET rates continue to be a concern for many countries around the world, the implications of this study are significant and extend beyond national borders, despite variations in the specific circumstances analyzed.

The study summarizes the experiences of specific developed and developing countries concerning youth unemployment and their smooth school-to-work transition. Detailed discussions of country experiences around the globe provide valuable guidance for policymakers and practitioners.

South Africa’s youth bulge provides both a potential asset and challenge for economic growth. The potential demographic dividend that this youth bulge represents can only manifest if youth are economically active. With youth unemployment above 51% and 7.6 million youth not in employment, education, or training − large numbers of youth are at-risk for long-term social and economic exclusion. This will only perpetuate structural inequality and poverty. In the context of extended lacklustre economic growth, the capacity of the formal economy to create large-scale employment is limited without active interventions to facilitate successful transition and entry into the labour market. This chapter explores the nature of youth transitions in South Africa. It examines the range of ‘failures’ that hamper successful transitions and presents a framework for conceptualising the role of labour market interventions in overcoming these. It then locates the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator (Harambee) within the ecosystem of labour market interventions, describing its approach, evolution and the lessons that have emerged for how to support successful youth transitions.

Wage employees enter self-employment either directly or in a staged manner and may subsequently undertake multiple stints at self-employment. Extant research on the relationship between entry modes and the persistence and outcomes of self-employment is inconclusive. This study investigates the relationship between wage employees’ initial mode of entry into self-employment and the duration of the subsequent first two stints of self-employment.

This study used a matched longitudinal sample of 9,550 employees who became majority owners of incorporated firms from 2005 to 2016.

The findings demonstrate that the initial mode of entry into self-employment matters for the first two stints at self-employment. Staged entry into self-employment was associated with a shorter first stint and became insignificant for the second stint. Staged entry into self-employment was positively related to the odds of becoming self-employed for the second time in the same firm.

Using a comprehensive and reliable dataset, the paper shifts focus from the aggregated onward journey of novice entrepreneurs (survival as the outcome) to the duration of their self-employment stints. By doing so, the paper offers insights into the process of becoming self-employed and the patterns associated with success/failure in entrepreneurship associated with self-employment duration.

This study aims to examine the association between apprenticeship training and self-employment and how gender moderates the association.

Secondary data from the World Bank’s Skills Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) survey on Ghana were analysed using a binary choice (logit regression) model. The STEP survey drew its nationally representative sample from the working-age population (15–64 years) in urban areas.

After controlling for several factors identified in the literature as determinants of self-employment, the results indicate that completing apprenticeship training increases the likelihood of being self-employed. However, women who have completed apprenticeship training are more likely to be self-employed than men.

By examining the moderating effect of gender on the association between apprenticeship training and self-employment, this study has offered new evidence that policymakers can use to promote self-employment, especially among women, to reduce the entrepreneurial gap between men and women.

While technical vocational education training (TVET) has been studied in-depth, the evolution and performance patterns of the subject remain unknown and limited. A bibliometric analysis was performed to examine the global scientific literature to assess the state of the art in TVET research over the past 23 years.

The Web of Science (WoS) database was searched to explore TVET-related research from 1999 to 2021, resulting in the identification of 7,512 articles. The VOSviewer software was used to investigate the network of collaboration between authors, institutions, countries and author keywords.

The results reveal that the subject categories of “education” and “educational research” are the most prolific contributors to TVET-related research, with 3,314 articles. Most of the previous studies in Phase I (1999–2006) focussed on human capital resources development in the TVET sector. Phase II (2007–2014) follows with the centralisation of TVET, focussing on technology transition in education. However, in Phase III (2015–2021), researchers appear to focus on vocational studies in higher education towards increasing the productivity of human resources via the implementation of technology transition.

The valuable findings of this study can facilitate better understanding among scholars on the trends of TVET research developments and on the direction of future research.

This paper tries to identify the wage gap between informal and formal workers and tests for the two-tier structure of the informal labour market in Poland.

The author employs the propensity score matching (PSM) technique and use data from the Polish Labour Force Survey (LFS) for the period 2009–2017 to estimate the wage gap between informal and formal workers, both at the means and along the wage distribution. The author uses two definitions of informal employment: (1) employment without a written agreement and (2) employment while officially registered as unemployed at a labour office. In order to reduce the bias resulting from the non-random selection of individuals into informal employment, he uses a rich set of control variables representing several individual characteristics.

After controlling for observed heterogeneity, the author finds that on average informal workers earn less than formal workers, both in terms of monthly earnings and hourly wage. This result is not sensitive to the definition of informal employment used and is stable over the analysed time period (2009–2017). However, the wage penalty to informal employment is substantially higher for individuals at the bottom of the wage distribution, which supports the hypothesis of the two-tier structure of the informal labour market in Poland.

The main contribution of this study is that it identifies the two-tier structure of the informal labour market in Poland: informal workers in the first quartile of the wage distribution and those above the first quartile appear to be in two partially different segments of the labour market.