A low-skill job after college: a stepping stone or a barrier?

Un emploi peu qualifié après la fac: frein ou tremplin ?

Michel Armel Ndayikeza ()
Additional contact information
Michel Armel Ndayikeza: CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne, Université du Burundi

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Going to college is a risky investment because there is no guarantee of securing a job after graduation. The transition from school to work is particularly complicated in low-income countries, where access to higher education has risen considerably over the past two decades, from 4.5% in 2000 to 9.5% in 2021 (WDI, 2025). Many graduates then find themselves in low-skill jobs, i.e. jobs that do not require a university degree, raising the question of the impact of these experiences on their future professional integration. In a context where the creation of skilled jobs is not keeping pace with the increase in the number of graduates (World Bank, 2023), this question becomes essential to inform the choices made by young people at the start of their careers.

Keywords: Low-skill Jobs; Underemployment; Labor demand; Job search; Incentivized Resume Rating; Field experiment; Expérience de terrain; Emploi peu qualifié; Sous-emploi; Demande de travail; Recherche d'emploi; Pays à faible revenu; Burundi; Evaluation incitative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://uca.hal.science/hal-05385117v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in 2025

Downloads: (external link)
https://uca.hal.science/hal-05385117v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05385117

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().