Across many countries, young adults face a persistent skills mismatch, with firms reporting difficulty finding candidates with adequate soft skills. In Rwanda, young women face particularly acute barriers to securing employment. This study evaluates a two-week intensive soft skills training...

Context: VET programmes in most countries are organised as a combination of learning in schools and learning in workplaces, with elements of workplace learning ranging from a few hours of job shadowing to longer duration internships or full apprenticeships. While there is no doubt about the...

Access to the labor market is crucial for the economic integration of asylum seekers. This study estimates the causal impact of work authorization timing on the labor market outcomes of likely asylum seekers. We link USCIS administrative records with American Community Survey microdata and use...

Immigrants across Europe earn less and work in lower-quality jobs than natives, but the mechanisms underlying these disparities remain poorly understood. This paper asks whether immigrant disadvantage reflects barriers to accessing good jobs or skill deficits that persist even within similar...

Employment gaps between refugees and natives are well documented, yet the role of trauma-related mental health in shaping these gaps remains underexplored, partly because most data sources lack measures of symptoms early after arrival. We assess probable PTSD shortly after displacement in an...

This study estimates the effects of an employment programme for disadvantaged unemployed individuals. The programme emphasized on-the-job training and contracting the unemployed for a few paid work hours as a stepping stone into the labour market. Evaluated through a randomised controlled trial,...

This paper examines the impact of an internship program in Argentina (Programa Primer Paso; PPP) on the formal employment trajectories of people with disabilities (PwD). Using administrative data from 2002 to 2023 and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we estimate that program...

Long-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity...

Long-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity...

Die KOFA-Studie "Quereinstiege als Erfolgsmodell? Erfahrungen von Unternehmen" zeigt auf Grundlage einer repräsentativen Unternehmensbefragung, wie verbreitet sie bereits sind und welche Erfahrungen Betriebe damit machen. Für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) ist das besonders relevant,...

In international comparison, dual systems of vocational education and training are often considered to be more successful than school-based systems for managing sustainable transitions from school to work. This assessment is particularly valid for Switzerland, while the German dual system has...

This paper examines the short- to long-term effects of large-scale refugee inflows on labour markets and anti-asylum attitudes. Using the exogenous arrival of Yugoslav refugees to Switzerland in the 1990s and municipal-level data with an instrumental variables strategy, we find that refugee...

This paper analyzes the role of health for refugees' integration into host societies' labor markets. We exploit the quasi-random dispersal policies of refugees across regions in Germany to analyze the causal effect of health on employment. Based on regional and temporal heterogeneity in a policy...

This paper examines the impact of a Swedish policy allowing manufacturing firms to influence the curricula of local educational institutions. Our analysis shows that the program has contributed to a significant reduction in youth unemployment, as well as an increase in marriage rates and male...

The labor market integration of asylum seekers remains a contested issue. Using the EU-Labor-Force-Survey, we characterize the state of asylum seekers’ labor market integration in Europe, and provide representative statistics on several dimensions of integration. We compare asylum seekers to...

Der Hauptgrund für die chronisch niedrige Erwerbsbeteiligung von Frauen im Vergleich zu Männern ist die "Child Penalty". Das Phänomen beschreibt die beruflichen Nachteile, die Frauen nach der Geburt des ersten Kindes erfahren, während Männer keine Einbußen verzeichnen. Wie beeinflusst...

This paper highlights recent trends in the Kosovo labor market and emigration. Like other Western Balkan countries, Kosovo experienced a sharp decline in population over the previous decade, as emigration increased. Using a structural model of the labor market and migration, the paper examines...

The labour market integration of migrants is a heavily politicised topic in Europe. Using detailed and recently updated data on migrant's motivations this paper places a much needed emphasis upon the heterogeneity of migrant groups and the pathways to their labour market integration. We focus on...

The CILS4NEPS project combined and harmonized panel data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) and Starting Cohort 4 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC4). This unlocks additional research potential beyond the scope of both...

Inequality is a dynamic phenomenon, and the relative and absolute positions of individuals are subject to frequent shocks. It is important to know if preventive interventions mitigate adverse inequality effects of labor market shocks. We consider individuals up to three months before the...

This paper provides the first experimental evidence on the long-term effects of work-study programs, leveraging a randomized lottery design from a national program in Uruguay. Participation leads to a persistent 11 percent increase in formal labor earnings seven years after the program, driven...

How does being over- or underqualified at the beginning of a worker's career affect skill acquisition, retention, and promotion? Despite the importance of mismatch for the labor market, self-selection into jobs has made estimating these effects difficult. We overcome endogeneity concerns in the...

Vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Reformüberlegungen zur Zumutbarkeit von Arbeit nach § 10 SGB II untersucht dieser Forschungsbericht, welche Entfernungen zwischen Wohnort und Arbeitsort bei Beschäftigungsaufnahmen von Personen im Grundsicherungsbezug typischerweise auftreten. Im Fokus stehen...

This study examines the long-term effects of a standardized skills assessment test-MySkills-on the employment outcomes of jobseekers without formal vocational qualifications in Germany. In a labour market where certified qualifications are the key currency for access to stable jobs, individuals...

We estimate the effects of being over- or underqualified for a job using quasi-random assignment of new enlistees to over 130 different jobs in the US Air Force. Being overqualified causes higher attrition, both during technical training and afterward when individuals are working in their...

The research note explores the mismatch between educational qualifications and job outcomes, introducing a novel mismatch indicator, the linkage score, which can be considered a significant innovation to the mismatch literature. The novel indicator is applied to Belgium, as a case study, and 18...