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This chapter focuses on two assertions about education and labour market organisation in Germany: (1) that Germany has a labour market organised along occupational lines; and (2) that in Germany labour market position is strongly predicted by level and type of education. It begins by setting the context in which the German education/labour market relationship has developed. Three dimensions of labour market outcomes are studied: labour force participation and unemployment; level of prestige obtained in first job; and class position of first job. These outcomes are then related to the educational and social background characteristics of labour force entrants. Changes in these relationships for both men and women during the last decades are examined in light of several major social and economic changes. These changes are: the increasingly higher education of labour market entrants; the increasing labour force participation of women; the transition into an economy where the supply of jobs falls short of the demand for employment; and the transformation of the occupational structure from industrially based to service based.

In this chapter the authors look at the transition from school to work in the United States of America (USA) from a human capital theory perspective. Human capital theory approaches educational stratification from the point of view of investment and returns: young people invest in themselves and their futures by enrolling in education and receive the return on this investment in the labour market. The authors contend that as long as the realities of educational differentiation are not obscured, an investment approach can provide researchers with objective criteria for choosing a basis for their comparisons. Further, the investment perspective makes more sense in the USA than it might elsewhere since in the USA education is undertaken by individuals and there are few institutional ties between educational institutions and employers and unions and few attempts to match the skills taught to the needs of employers. It is suggested that because of the absence of these stable institutional linkages students graduate with little knowledge of the needs of prospective employers, making initial labour market experiences of young adults unstable.

This book presents the latest research into the value of qualifications for securing employment. The ways in which educational qualifications affect the occupational outcomes of men and women in thirteen countries are examined. These countries are Australia, United Kingdom (UK), France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United States of America (USA) and each chapter presents detailed information on the educational institutions of individual countries as well as reports on rigorous statistical analyses of the associations between qualifications and occupations.

This chapter introduces the book, a collection of chapters examining the way in which educational qualifications affect employment outcomes in thirteen countries. Beginning with the premise that the role of occupational qualifications varies between societies, the main objective of the book is to identify systematic differences among countries in the relationship between education and occupational outcomes and to relate them to their institutional contexts. The chapter has a section reviewing previous research, a section containing a brief description of the research design, and a section detailing the data collection and analysis process. The conclusion to the chapter reviews the study and its findings, pointing the way for future research.

In this chapter the relationship between educational qualifications and class of entry into the labour market in Ireland is examined using data on entrants to the labour market since 1967. The goal of the study is to show how macro-social and institutional factors condition the nature of the link between qualifications and entry class. The chapter begins with an outline of salient institutional features of the Irish educational system and the Irish labour market. Four sets of analyses are reported: (1) the relationship between class origin and education; (2) the relationship between class origin and class of entry; (3) the relationship between education and class of entry; and (4) the relationship between class of entry and the effects of both class origins and education. It is suggested that among both men and women, in general terms, the impact of education is chiefly hierarchical, with employers, in Ireland's slack labour market, using level of educational attainment as a signalling device for 'potential general productivity'.