Apprenticeship and Youth Unemployment

Cahuc, Pierre; Hervelin, Jeremy

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Apprenticeship and Youth Unemployment

IZA Discussion Paper No. 13154

65 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2020 Last revised: 6 May 2025

See all articles by Pierre Cahuc

Pierre Cahuc

National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) - National School for Statistical and Economic Administration (ENSAE); Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne - Equipe Universitaire de Recherche en Economie Quantitative (EUREQUA); University of Angers - French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Jeremy Hervelin

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Abstract

In France, two years after school completion and getting the same diploma, the employmentrate of apprentices is about 15 percentage points higher than that of vocational students.Despite this difference, this paper shows that there is almost no difference between theprobability of getting a callback from employers for unemployed youth formerly eitherapprentices or vocational students. This result indicates that the higher employment rate ofapprentices does not rely, in the French context, on better job access of those who do notremain in their training firms. The estimation of a job search and matching model showsthat the expansion of apprenticeship has very limited effects on youth unemployment ifthis is not accompanied by an increase in the retention of apprentices in their training firm.

Keywords: apprenticeship, school-to-work transitions, field experiment

JEL Classification: J24, M53, M51

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Cahuc, Pierre and Hervelin, Jeremy, Apprenticeship and Youth Unemployment. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13154, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3579246