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Since the 1980s, all OECD countries have seen significant increases in the share of their populations completing their education with a higher education qualification. This drive to raise education levels is intended to help national economies deal with rapid changes. While it is still too early to assess the scale of the effects of these changes over the long term, the authors seek to investigate them over the short term, and particularly their impact on the groups first affected, namely young people embarking on their working lives. The present study is based on a synthetic indicator: wages observed after 5 years in the labour market for two cohorts of young French people investigated almost 20 years apart, in 1997 in the case of the older cohort and in 2015 in the case of the younger one. While remaining in education still guarantees access to more highly paid jobs, this tendency towards extending the time spent in education does not benefit all young people in the same way. Disparities depending on level of initial education that mark the early years of the working life have to be examined in the light of the observed tightening of the wages of those who are in a job and the growing inequalities of the chances of obtaining one.

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In 2013, three years after leaving the education system, 22 per cent of economically active young people were looking for work. This is the highest level ever observed in CEREQ’s school-to-work transition surveys. The increase compared with the 2004 cohort is 16 percentage points for non-graduates and three percentage points for graduates of long degree programmes. Nevertheless, first jobs are neither more precarious nor less well paid.

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