When Skills Are Specific: Labor Market Entry and Occupational Mismatch for Apprenticeship Graduates

Dita Eckardt

No 21784, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Using administrative data on the largest group of German labor market entrants - graduates from an apprenticeship in a specific occupation - this paper studies the effect of entry conditions on occupational mismatch. Higher entry unemployment entails persistent earnings losses driven by full-time wage effects. Concurrently, occupational matching falls, accounting for 20% of the wage effect. A framework shows that mismatch can arise from cyclical training firm retention or occupation-specific shocks, which I confirm empirically using novel data on occupation-specific unemployment. The findings highlight that specific skills protect graduates from unemployment but may expose them to costly occupational mismatch.

Keywords: Apprenticeship training; labor market entry conditions; occupational mismatch; human capital specificity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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