oa Geografische mobiliteit en het vinden van een passende baan

Geographical mobility and the match between education and job

In this article we examine the influence of geographical mobility on the match between education and job. We investigate to what extent geographical mobile school-leavers have better education-job matches than school-leavers who are less mobile. For this purpose we use data about school-leavers from secondary (vocational) education and higher vocational education in the period 1996 to 2001. Contrary to previous research we examine, next to the educational level of the job, also the match between field of study and job, job security and number of working hours of the job. Incorporating this set of four job characteristics adds a potentially useful dimension to understand school-leavers job-search behaviour and the role of geographical mobility in finding a suitable job. Our results show that to some extent mobility leads to a better match between education and job. It appears that mobile school-leavers have a higher probability of a permanent or a full-time job than school-leavers who are less mobile. Furthermore, the probability of a job at the attained educational level increases with mobility. However, the impact of mobility is smaller for the latter. This result suggests that school-leavers especially are willing to be mobile to ensure job security or a full-time job.