Vocational Education, Earnings and Job Satisfaction in Europe

Seamus McGuinness, Lorcan Kelly, Anne Devlin () and Adele Whelan ()
Additional contact information
Lorcan Kelly: Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin
Anne Devlin: Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin
Adele Whelan: ESRI, Dublin

No 18134, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines the earnings and job satisfaction of Vocational Education and Training (VET) graduates in the European Union (EU) using two definitions of vocational education: a self-reported definition and a more specific definition that incorporates work-based learning. The incidence of third-level VET falls from 74% to 29% under the stricter definition. Across the EU, the returns to vocational and academic qualifications are comparable for upper secondary, post-secondary and tertiary qualifications. Earnings premia vary between countries, with VET generating higher returns in just under one-third of all EU-28 members. Additionally, third level VET graduates enjoy higher levels of job satisfaction.

Keywords: work-based learning; european countries; job satisfaction; earnings; vocational education; on-the-job training (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I26 J24 J30 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eur and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18134.pdf (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:iza:izadps:dp18134

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().