Wages and employment: The role of occupational skills

Esther Mirjam Girsberger, Matthias Krapf and Miriam Rinawi (miriam.rinawi@snb.ch)
Additional contact information
Miriam Rinawi: Swiss National Bank, Switzerland
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Miriam Koomen

No 2019/01, Working Paper Series from Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract: We study how skills acquired in vocational education and training (VET) affect wages and employment dynamics in Switzerland. We present and estimate a search and matching model for workers with a VET degree who differ in their interpersonal, cognitive and manual skills. Assuming a match productivity which exhibits worker-job complementarity, we estimate how workers� skills map into job offers, wages and unemployment. Firms value cognitive skills on average almost twice as much as interpersonal and manual skills. Moreover, they prize complementarity in cognitive and interpersonal skills. We estimate average returns to VET skills in hourly wages of 9%. Furthermore, VET improves labour market opportunities through higher job arrival rate and lower job destruction. Workers thus have large benefits from getting a VET degree.

Keywords: Occupational training; labour market search; multidimensional skills. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E23 J23 J24 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2019-01-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hrm, nep-ltv and nep-mac
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Related works:
Working Paper: Wages and employment: The role of occupational skills (2018)
Working Paper: Wages and Employment: The Role of Occupational Skills (2018)
Working Paper: Wages and employment: The role of occupational skills (2018)
Working Paper: Wages and Employment: The Role of Occupational Skills (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uts:ecowps:2019/01

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