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The purpose of this paper is to use the two-way fixed effect (TWFE) methodology to estimate the impact of the reform, exploiting its staggered implementation across regions. The analysis is restricted to graduates from the short vocational track before and after the reform.

This paper studies the impact on the length of school-to-work transition of a reform that extended from two to three years the short vocational track in Italy in the early 2000s.

The study finds that the reform had a positive impact and reduced school-to-work transition by around five months (a 24% reduction). Moreover, the new short vocational track proved to be extremely effective for migrants and females, whose school-to-work transition was reduced by 1.4 years and 0.9 years, respectively. In implementing the new short vocational track, some regions adopted a quasi-market organization in which private training institutions competed with public schools. This model proved to be more effective in shortening school-to-work transitions, in particular for migrants.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature on the labor-market effect of vocational education by showing that lengthening the short vocational track, and changing the overall content of curricula, can speed up school-to-work transition.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the school-to-work transition of young people from subsequent school exit cohorts between 2001 and 2012 in Egypt, thus, presenting an early evidence on the adjustments of the labor market in terms of patterns of youth transition to a first job following the 2011 Egyptian uprising.

The analysis compares the early employment outcomes of those who left school after the January 25, 2011 uprising to that of those who left before 2011. The authors also separately control for the cohorts who left school in 2008 and 2009, in an attempt to disentangle any labor market adjustments that might have happened following the financial crisis, and before the revolution. Using novel and unexploited representative data from the 2014 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE), the authors estimate the probability of transition to any first job within 18 months from leaving education and that of the transition to a good-quality job, controlling for the year of school exit. The authors also estimate the hazard of finding a first job and a good-quality job using survival analysis.

School exit cohorts of 2008–2009 (following the financial crisis) and those of 2011–2012 (in the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings) experienced a significantly higher likelihood of finding a first job within 18 months than that of the cohorts of 2001–2007. However, this came at the expense of the quality of job, conditional on having found a first job. The results of the hazard model show that school leavers after 2008 who were not able to transition to a job shortly after leaving school experienced longer unemployment spells than their peers who left school before 2007. The odds of finding a good-quality job appears to decline with time spent in non-employment or in a bad-quality first job.

This paper contributes to a limited, yet growing, literature on how school-to-work transition evolved during the global financial crisis and the Egyptian 2011 revolution. Using data from SYPE 2014, the most recent representative survey conducted in Egypt on youth and not previously exploited to study youth school-to-work transition, the paper investigates the short-term adjustments of the youth labor market opportunities during that critical period of Egypt and the region’s history.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the issue of dual vocational education and training (VET) attritions as indicating difficulties in the transition from school to work.

The methodology consists of a content analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 46 young people who interrupted their dual VET during the first year.

The findings showed that VET “dropouts” experience transitional problems. These can be one of two sorts: diachronic or synchronic. Diachronic problems are related to difficulties with the shift from a standard school system to VET. Synchronic problems are due to difficulties in learning, relational or working environments.

The results stress the need to widen the definition of transition and to consider the context in which the transition takes place. Further research could compare these results with employers' and trainers' points‐of‐view.

Accordingly, interventions should be taken before and after the precise moment of the shift from school to VET and should include all stakeholders of VET.

The paper encompasses three original aspects: it considers school‐to‐work transition as a process beginning before and ending after the concrete shift to VET, suggesting that a transition is achieved only when the person reaches a relatively stable situation on the workplace; consequently, it conceives VET attrition as an indicator of a failure of the school‐to‐work transition process; and it stresses the influence of the social and the learning environment on the quality of VET.

Transition from secondary school to adult life is a critical period in students' lives. Transition programs delivered at school play an important role in supporting students with disabilities to achieve successful post-school outcomes particularly in the case of transition to work whereby employment is acknowledged as the main target after graduating from secondary school. Post-school outcomes for students with disabilities related to employment, however, remain poor compared to students without disabilities. Using the taxonomy for transition programming and Bronfenbrenner's ecological system theory, this chapter proposes a model and action that needs to be taken in advancing school to work transition programming in Indonesia.

The aim of the paper is to locate the role of social and emotional support during the school‐to‐work transitions of apprentices, within the Australian vocational education and training context.

The research reported here is based on an independent evaluation of an apprentice suicide prevention and support program. This program has been implemented in rural and regional Australia, and findings highlight the program's retention of key messages in the long‐term (i.e. 6 months to 2 years post‐completion). The work is based on both quantitative questionnaires from 119 apprentices as well as 18 face‐to‐face interviews.

The research showed that apprentices’ resilience to face school‐to‐work transitional challenges can be enhanced by increasing knowledge of suicide risk factors and sources of social and emotional support had increased. Findings indicate that a number of apprentices had made significant changes in their lives as a result of participating in the program. While 10 per cent of apprentices identify as “socially isolated”, it was encouraging to note that peer support, as a result of the program, can be considered an informal referral point to formal help‐provision and support.

While the program has been successfully applied to building and construction industry apprentices, there is overlap in school‐to‐work transition issues of other types of apprenticeships/traineeships; this merits consideration of wider application of apprentice support programs within the Australian vocational education sector.

This paper draws together a focus on school‐to‐work vulnerabilities and social‐emotional support (similar to that found in youth development programs) as it can be applied to the vocational education and training sector.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it analyses the relationship between educational level, the school-to-work transition period for youth and positions which suffer from an education-job mismatch in Kyrgyzstan; and second, it investigates the effect of the education-job mismatch on the wages of youth in Kyrgyzstan.

The study uses the International Labor Organization 2013 data from the school-to-work transition survey for Kyrgyzstan. The Kaplan–Meier failure analysis is employed to demonstrate the relationship between school-to-work transition and mismatch status. To investigate the effect of an education-job mismatch on wages, a Mincer-type equation with OLS estimations is used. Along with this, taking into consideration potential unobserved heterogeneity issue, a propensity score matching method is applied.

The results indicate a large difference between those with tertiary education and those with non-tertiary education in terms of the probability of being employed with a wrong match. Young individuals without tertiary education are more likely to be employed with a right match. Analysis of the impact of overeducation on wages shows that the impact of overeducation depends on how it is measured. According to the objective approach, overeducated male individuals receive low wages compared to well matched, but estimation results based on the total sample of subjective approach indicate the positive effects of overeducation on wage.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on the school-to-work transition and overeducation by focusing on one of the transition economies, which has been largely neglected by the literature.

This is Part 1 of the two special issues on the topic, “School to work transition around the world – the effect of the pandemic recession.” The first part focuses on the determinants of the school-to-work transition (STWT) and the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the young worker and their response to uncertain labor market conditions. The second issue will explore the country-specific experiences around the globe in tackling the problem of a smooth STWT. The purpose of this introductory article is to elaborate on the transition of young workers in the labor market. Discussion on the status of various indicators of the youth labor market (unemployment, underemployment and not in employment, education and training [NEET]) is also integrated. The determining factors of school-to-work transition (STWT) and the role of technical and vocational institutions and universities are analyzed. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 on the labor market is also evaluated. After the pandemic, there was a dreadful change in the job market; this study dives into those diverse factors and carves out the multiple impacts on youth unemployment.

The study analyses relevant literature on STWT, NEET and COVID-19 implications for the labor market, based on the other papers in this special issue. Using the review method, the authors identified similar research articles and reports which helped in strengthening the study’s argument. The primary focus of the study was on the smooth transition of young workers in the labor market and the impact of the pandemic on youth unemployment. Hence, literature supported the authors in giving the justifications from various economies and societies.

The paper finds that youth worldwide have suffered from the repercussions of COVID-19, especially in their early career (STWT). Skill mismatch, underemployment, job losses, salary cut downs, health issues, vocational education importance, vulnerable employment, etc. were some of the significant impacts the authors identified by analyzing the various reports and papers. Furthermore, this paper also discusses the role of active labor market policies and hiring incentives for promoting youth employment.

The paper finds that the times ahead are challenging ones. There is a dearth of productive job opportunities due to slow economic growth. The unemployment rate among youth and adults is high, and labor markets have become more competitive. The young generation is now left with no choice but to upgrade and improve their skill set or some other expertise. On the one hand, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and universities need to enhance their marketable knowledge and skills, and on the other hand, there is a need for active labor market policies to encourage their participation in the labor markets.

This paper strongly contributes to highlighting the professional and societal hit backs faced due to the aftermath of COVID-19. The study summarizes the specific details of STWT and employment issues faced by youth in various parts of the world.

The transition from school to work is a crucial component in a young person’s transition to adulthood. Recently data have emerged from one of the very first projects on school to work transitions. This research was undertaken in the early 1960s by researchers at the University of Leicester, and led by Norbert Elias. Nearly 900 interview schedules from the project “Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles” have been discovered, which provide a significant insight into the school to work transitions of the 1960s. This paper aims to present some of this data for the first time. In particular the discussion will focus on the respondents’ reflections on education, their expectations of paid employment and their perceptions of a “good job”. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of using such historical data and considers its implications for current debates on transitions and the expectations of school leavers.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the enrolment at university and the subsequent possible dropout as a piece of the school-to-work transition and ask whether it improves or worsens the labour market outcomes a few years after graduation from the high school.

The analysis exploits data from the upper secondary graduate survey by ISTAT on a cohort of high school graduates and investigates the effect of dropping out four years after graduation. The labour market outcomes of university dropouts are compared to the outcomes of high school graduates who never enrolled at university. A propensity score matching approach is applied. The model is also estimated on the subsamples of males and females.

The findings show that spending a period at university and leaving it before completion makes the transition to work substantially more difficult. Both the probability of being NEET and getting a bad job increase in the case of dropout, while no relevant effect is found on earnings. Moreover, the impact of university dropout tends to be more harmful the longer the spell from enrolment to dropping out. Separate estimates by gender point out that females appear to be relatively more affected in the case of dropping out without a fallback plan.

While the existing studies in the literature on the school-to-work transition mostly focus on the determinants of the dropout, this paper investigates whether and how the employment outcomes are affected by dropping out in Italy. Moreover, university dropouts are compared to high school graduates with no university experience, rather than to university graduates. Finally, evidence on the mechanisms driving the effect of dropping out is provided, by considering timing and motivations for dropping out.