Abstract

The joint project is concerned with the empirical analysis of career entry processes of apprentices who have been trained in craft companies. The data base will be the Integrated Employment Histories of the IAB, with which the identification of training graduates and the examination of individual career tracks are possible. An identification of crafts is possible since the introduction of the Classification of Occupations 2010 on the basis of the training statistics. Thus, the success of apprentices in crafts can also be analysed separately. So far this was only possible for certain occupations which are to be assigned to crafts without overlapping (cf. e.g. Konietzka/Salmon 2003, Wydra-Somaggio et al. 2010).
Crafts play a special role in providing youth with apprenticeships. It is distributed equally across all regions and, in particular in rural areas. Moreover, due to the rather small-business structure and the specific training contents, entry hurdles are rather low compared to many secondary service occupations.
In many cases, however, there is a need for training in crafts, as craft companies are more likely to follow a productivity-oriented approach than an investment model. The training companies are therefore more likely to rely on the fact that their apprentices are already relatively productive in the work process after a short period of time, rather than that these companies have to follow a targeted personnel policy to ensure the future demand for skilled workers (Dietrich 2015). Because of the small-business structure, the often rather short-term personnel and resource planning of many craft companies usually leaves little room for long-term training investments. Small enterprises often lack the necessary resources to test apprenticeship applicants sufficiently for the fit to the respective training occupation or company. This circumstance, as well as false expectations of craft occupations should be central explanations for the above-average early dropout shares in crafts (Wiethölter et al. 2016). On the other hand, even because the many early dropouts, such training companies often too many trainees to ensure that they keep enough trainees throughout the training year.