The impact of changing youth employment patterns on future wages

This study examines employment patterns on the labor market for German apprenticeship graduates and returns to early-career employment stability over the past four decades. The data indicate the decreasing stability of youth employment since the late 1980s. Exploiting variation in the timing of macroeconomic shocks, I identify true state dependencies and find that stable employment early in professional life exhibits significant wage returns in future periods. These returns are particularly pronounced at the bottom of the wage distribution and have substantially increased during the 1990s. Accordingly, securing the training-to-work transitions would primarily be beneficial for the wage growth of workers with a generally low earning potential.