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Many politicians and employers consider the expansion of higher education in all industrial societies as an efficient way to modernise the economy and to decrease youth unemployment. However, a major part of the scientific debate focuses on skill upgrading versus downgrading of occupations and the relationships with schooling and vocational preparation. This analysis is a tentative first step towards clarifying this trend and relationships between educational policy and qualification requirements in Spain. The authors of this article explain that their particular purpose was to attempt to answer this central question - ‘is the increase in the number of jobs which require a high level of education sufficient to absorb the increasing education of the labour force, and is there a formal correspondence between changes in occupational structure and educational levels?’. Results of the methodology devised by several European teams, financed by the European Centre for Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) and applied on the Spanish labour market allowed Giret and Masjuan to provide some information in answer to the question. On the Spanish labour market, statistical results indicate that an occupation-education-age structure of an estimated theoretical labour force based on a ‘supply-side effect’ is more highly correlated with the observed occupation-education-age structure in 1990 than an estimated labour force based on a ‘demand-side effect’. Despite the technological change or the industry rationalisation, the results seem to show a homogeneous propagation of the educational level for each occupation.

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This paper aims to study the earnings expectations of first-year students at a French university and to compare them with the observed earnings of young people in the labour market for that same year. One of the original features of this research is that it includes, as explanatory variables, several measurements of cognitive capacities which it might be thought would influence individuals' expected earnings. Furthermore, although many surveys have been made in both developed and developing countries, none has so far been conducted in France as far as [the authors] are aware. This type of enquiry seems all the more important because the French labour market is highly segmented to the disadvantage of young people. The structuring of internal markets relegates young people to the position of outsiders on the labour market, an effect that is further accentuated in times of economic crisis.

The results, even if a slight overestimation is observed (about seven per cent), point to a certain proximity between expected earnings of young people at the start of their careers and actual earnings on the labour market. However, the overestimation strongly increases 10 years later (about 41 per cent). [The authors'] findings also highlight the importance of the environment in which students make their choices about education. Expected earnings are proportionally higher when their parents seem to be involved in the careers guidance, even controlling for the effect of parental socio-economic status. The positive opinion of parents about the orientation or the connection between the discipline and the father's occupation are generally associated with higher earnings. In addition, our results show a strong impact of cognitive variables which are far more significant than variables relating to past educational performances.

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This report deals with the dynamics of the balance between the supply of and the demand for skills in the labour market in developed countries, especially those of the European Union. In a context of radical changes in the demand for labour, which have resulted primarily from the development of international trade and technological progress, the transformation of the nature and content of work is forcing the productive system to adapt to new skills within a very short period of time, which often bears no relation to the traditional timescale for the acquisition of qualifications. At the same time, as the average number of years of study per head of population in Europe continues to rise, generations of increasingly highly qualified young people are finding it no easier to obtain employment. On the basis of this twofold observation, the aim of our research is to examine the way in which adjustments are made in the skills market and the role of initial and further-training systems in the regulation of that market.

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The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 66.507. Volumes two and three are indexed at TD/TNC 66.508 and TD/TNC 66.509. Individual chapters from the three volume set are indexed from TD/TNC 66.510 to TD/TNC 66.540.

The first background report, published in two volumes, is indexed at TD/IRD 88.38 and TD/INT 58.286. Show less