Effects of the expansion of education and training on employment and non-activity

Abstract

"The level of vocational training among the population is gaining importance increasingly as a location factor in modern industrial societies. In this respect the expansion of education and training over the past few decades can be regarded as an important element for the safeguarding of Germany as an economic location. The increased education and training efforts of the younger generations could not fail to have an effect on employment and non-activity. The subject of this article is an account of these long-term interactions between education/training, employment and non-activity. The expansion of education and training was essentially characterized by extended periods of education and training for increasingly large sections of the population. In this way the number of people in education and training from the age of 15 onwords more than doubled between 1960 and 1992 in the 'old' Federal states (i.e. without the Länder of the former GDR). The participation in training by 15 to 17-year-olds rose to over 90 percent of the corresponding age cohorts. At the same time larger and larger proportions of graduates obtained 'higher' general education and/or vocational qualifications. As a consequence there has been a sustainable rise in the qualification structure among the working population. In particular among the younger generations the proportion of 'unskilled'workers and non-active people has been falling continuously, whereas the number of people who have completed vocational training or higher education courses has increased considerably. Because steadily better qualified younger population groups will in the course of time replace less educated/trained older ones, the qualification level of the population will continue to rise even without additional training efforts. 'Higher' general education or vocational qualifications generally demand a longer stay in education or training and therefore result in a delayed entry into working life. The average age at which in-firm training is completed rose by 2.3 years between 1975 and 1991, the average age for completion of higher education courses rose by 2.4 years. Irrespective of other factors, these delays shortened the average working by at least two years.The young population potential necessary for the supply of the expansion of education and training had to be extracted either from the labour force system or from the non-active population. As the results of the study show, a reducing-effect on the employment system caused directly by the expansion of education and training can only be detected for the male population. Because this section of the population in the employment-relevant groups showed hardly any potential of non-active persons, any increase in the participation in training measures had inevitably to result in correspondig reduction of the labour force. The situation is different however for the younger female generations, at least from the age of 20 onwards. They increased not only their participation in education and training but also their participation in employment. Here both increases were supplied substantially from the potential of non-active persons." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Reinberg, A., Fischer, G. & Tessaring, M. (1995): Auswirkungen der Bildungsexpansion auf die Erwerbs- und Nichterwerbstätigkeit. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 28, No. 3, p. 300-322.