Jul 17, 2015 - out' literature, which identifies competition for jobs between students and low educated non- students ...... Managers Professionals Technicians.
Students in Work and their Impact on the Labour Market Miroslav Beblavý & Brian Fabo No. 410 / July 2015 Abstract The purpose of this study is to evaluate the size and composition of the student labour force in order to consider its potential impact on labour markets in the European Union. The paper is based on an analysis of EU Labour Force Survey data from 2011, supplemented by the findings of the EUROSTUDENT project. The structure of student labour is discussed within the framework of the so-called ‘crowdingout’ literature, which identifies competition for jobs between students and low educated nonstudents, particularly in the retail and wholesale sectors. In contrast to these assumptions, we found that, depending on the age of the student, the profile of student workers closely matches that of non-students with medium- to-high educational attainment. In general, the retail and wholesale sectors are of importance in the employment of students under the age of 25, but students typically take positions in the middle of the occupational hierarchy, rather than in the lower-grade positions. Meanwhile, older students, often professionals furthering their education while studying, are typically located in similar jobs and sectors to university graduates. A common trait of student work is its very high degree of flexibility compared to that of nonstudents. Nevertheless, the structure of student labour does not lead us to believe that student workers are particularly prone to be present in the precarious segment of the labour market.
CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS’ research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. The opinions expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CEPS. For a more succinct version of this paper, please see the CEPS Commentary by the same authors, 17 July 2015 (www.ceps.eu/publications/are-student-workers-threat-orsolution). ISBN 978-94-6138-471-3 Available for free downloading from the CEPS website (www.ceps.eu) © CEPS 2015
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 1.
Who are student workers? ...................................................................................................2
2.
Overview of student workers ..............................................................................................5
3.
The structure of student work ........................................................................................... 11
4.
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 23
References ....................................................................................................................................... 24
Students in Work and their Impact on the Labour Market Miroslav Beblavý & Brian Fabo* CEPS Working Document No. 410 / July 2015 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the size and composition of the student labour force and elaborate on its potential impact on the labour markets of the European Union. The aim is to answer the following interrelated questions:
What is the size and composition of the tertiary-level student working population in an era of massification of higher education? What work is done by tertiary-level students? What is the importance of the gender dimension with regard to student work? Which groups are complemented by/compete with tertiary student labour?
A unifying aspect of the various approaches to analysing student labour is the overlap with low-skilled labour. The reasons behind this overlap include the extreme levels of flexibility of many student jobs and their localisation in certain sectors associated with low-skilled work. However, the question of what makes certain jobs ‘low skilled’ remains open in the literature and indeed various authors use a range of arbitrary thresholds and criteria to determine whether a specific worker or job is low-skilled or not (Kureková et al., 2013). This report aims to cover student labour as a whole, rather than focus on any arbitrary segment, and contrasts the actual distribution of working students between jobs and sectors with the assumptions about the low-skilled nature of student work. The descriptive analysis is based on the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) dataset. Although the EU-LFS does not aim to determine the size of the student population, it provides a sufficient sample of student and non-student workers to carry out an in-depth comparison of these two groups. For the purpose of this report, we use EU27 data. While the EU-LFS is conducted annually and allows developments to be observed over time, the extent to which this is possible is limited by the availability of historical data. For this reason, the bulk of the information presented in this report is based on the latest available data from 2011. Where possible, we analyse developments over time, with LFS data supplemented by official statistics. Where appropriate, the findings are also supplemented by the data collected within the framework of the Eurostudent project, which are available in the form of aggregated statistics on the project website. The aim of the project, which took place between 2008 and 2011, was to collect comparable data on the social dimension of student education. While there is a student workforce in all EU countries, the scope of the phenomenon varies. Some reasons for variance include access to higher education, which is determined by factors such as the structure of higher education funding (and the associated question of fees that Miroslav Beblavý is Senior Associate Research Fellow and Brian Fabo is a Researcher in the Economy and Finance research area at CEPS. They gratefully acknowledge excellent research assistance from Clay Kitchura. *
1
2 BEBLAVÝ & F ABO
students have to cover); the capacity of universities to offer placements to prospective students; the presence and structure of apprenticeship programmes; and time constraints. All these factors differ between countries (and indeed sometimes between institutions within individual countries). Consequently, where appropriate, the analysis also captures differences between individual EU member states.
1.
Who are student workers?
The supply of highly educated workers in Europe has grown rapidly over the course of the 2000s. While in 2001 on average 17% of the population aged 25-65 had completed tertiary education in the EU27, in 2011 it was already 24%. Over the same time period, the share of workers not having attained at least upper secondary education level dropped from 38% to 30%. This means that while in 2001 62% of workers had at least higher-than-secondary education, in 2011 70% had upper secondary or even tertiary-level education. The increased participation of Europeans in tertiary education also means that there is an increased number of students living in the EU27, an increase from 16.5 million in 2001 to over 20 million in 2011 (see Appendix Part I, Table A1). The share of working students thus remained quite steady at around 30%, despite the Great Recession. Figure 1. Relative growth of employment among students and in general population
Employment in EU 27 125% 120% 115% 110% 105% 100% 2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
student employment
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
general employment
Note: Figure represents the number of workers, not a share. Source: Own calculation based on EU LFS, Eurostat.
Figure 2 shows that the growth of students has by far outpaced any growth in the workingage population. Additionally, the number of students aged over the 25 years of age threshold associated with a move from higher education to the workforce has been growing even faster.
STUDENTS IN WORK AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE LABOUR M ARKET 3
Figure 2. Index of growth of workforce (grey), students (blue), and students under 25 (orange) in the EU27 140.0 135.0 130.0 125.0 120.0 115.0 110.0 105.0 100.0 1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Source: Eurostat (1998=100).
Nonetheless, the rise in the number of students compared to the size of the labour force has not happened in all EU member states to the same degree. For example, the expansion of the student population has not kept pace with the growth of the economically active population in Spain, but has significantly outpaced it in a number of new EU member states and in the Netherlands (Table 1). Table 1. Growth of students and population in the EU27, 2001-2011 Country Cyprus
Luxembourg Romania Czech Republic Slovakia Netherlands Lithuania Malta European Union Germany Denmark Bulgaria Estonia Sweden Belgium Poland Hungary Slovenia United Kingdom Latvia
Students growth 169% 112% 64% 72% 57% 55% 38% 55% 38% 33% 36% 15% 20% 29% 29% 17% 16% 17% 21% 1%
Population growth
20% 17% -10% 2% 0% 4% -12% 6% 3% -1% 4% -10% -5% 6% 7% 0% -2% 3% 7% -12%
Difference
149% 96% 73% 69% 57% 51% 50% 49% 35% 33% 32% 25% 24% 23% 22% 18% 18% 14% 14% 13%
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12% 10% 9% 2% 18% 6%
Austria Finland Italy Portugal Ireland Spain
4% 4% 4% 2% 19% 15%
8% 7% 4% 0% -1% -9%
Sources: Own calculations based on Eurostat data.
The growth in the number of older students is important to understanding the dynamics of students as workers, because students above the age of 25 are especially likely to work. Figure 3. Average share of students in general/working students per age group in EU27 member states, 2011
All
15-20 20-25 25-30
Working
30+
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Source: Own calculations based on EU-LFS 2011 dataset average of EU 27.
A look at the self-reported main status of the respondent shows another dimension – while younger students consider themselves primarily as students who work ‘on the side’, older students are more likely to be workers who study on the side (Table 2).
15-20
20-25
25-30
30+
Main Status of all students
Student
95.40%
87.02%
56.27%
19.20%
Worker
3.37%
10.76%
37.76%
70.09%
Unemployed
0.70%
1.50%
4.37%
5.72%
Other
0.53%
0.72%
1.60%
4.98%
Main Status of student workers
Table 2. Main status of students per age group
Student
68.90%
50.92%
22.83%
6.91%
Worker
31.00%
48.50%
71.67%
91.41%
Unemployed
0.01%
0.12%
3.13%
0.31%
Other
0.09%
0.46%
0.60%
1.38%
Note: Data unavailable for the main status (variable maintstat) of students in the UK and Germany, data insufficient for main status of student workers in Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, Slovakia and Spain. Source: Own calculations based on EU LFS 2011 dataset average of EU member states.
STUDENTS IN WORK AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE LABOUR M ARKET 5
2.
Overview of student workers
The gender aspect of student work is an under-researched topic. The LFS data show that in all countries except Germany, where the gender ratio is about equal, there are more females than males in the student population. Slovakia is a particularly pronounced case with over 60% of university students being female. The share of female working students is approximately the same as the share of women in the entire student population when taking all students into account, but higher when only students under the age of 25 are considered (Table 3). In this respect the student working population differs greatly from the general population of workers. While women are more likely to study and typically make up the majority of student workers, most member states fall behind the EU 2020 goal of achieving the equal participation of men and women in the labour force due to the lagging participation of women (Mills et al., 2014). Table 3. Share of women in the student population, working students in general, under 25yrs AT BE BG CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GR HU IE IT LT LU LV MT NL PL PT RO SE SI SK UK EU27
Students 55.02 55.51 54.58 56.10 58.35 49.63 58.00 57.15 54.24 53.42 53.99 53.24 53.79 52.15 57.55 56.02 52.90 56.99 58.34 51.23 59.76 55.58 53.83 56.55 55.03 60.76 55.22 55.37
Working students 55.02 55.51 54.58 56.10 58.35 49.63 58.00 57.15 54.24 53.42 53.99 53.24 53.79 52.15 57.55 56.02 52.90 56.99 58.34 51.23 59.76 55.58 53.83 56.55 55.03 60.76 55.22 55.37
Source: Own calculations based on EU-LFS 2011 dataset.
Working students under 25 60.98 60.73 57.33 58.78 63.55 56.88 62.67 63.94 60.23 52.37 53.36 50.31 59.34 58.9 61.16 53.02 66.67 51.02 67.8 55.22 57.59 51.66 52.89 60.10 57.71 57.84 58.65 58.17
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The share of working students differs greatly between individual member states. The data show that the share of working students is 75% in the Netherlands and over 60% in Finland and in Denmark. Meanwhile, in Romania and Greece the share is just over 10% (Table 4). Table 4. Study fees on undergraduate students’ budget, tertiary students participating in a training programme, youth unemployment and share of working students in general and under the age of 25
AT BE BG CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GR HU IE IT LT LU LV MT NL PL PT RO SE SI SK UK EU 27
Share of fees 2
4 0 15 10 0 6
22 41 19 4 15 8 14 0 9 11
Share of paid Youth unemShare of ployment training working programmes students 4.2 8.8 3.3 22.4 1.5 23.2 5.5 17.2 0.6 18.3 17.1 13.8 10.6 13.8 1.8 32.9 8.7 41.6 5.2 21.4 34.4 23.7 7.3 32.9 1.6 26.6 1.7 27.7 6.2 27.8 1.8 35.1 12.3 15.6 1.0 34.5 4.5 13.1 2.0 8.7 7.3 23.7 3.8 27.7 0.7 22.1 0.3 25.2 0.0 14.7 1.1 33.6 1.0 19.6 5.4 23.2
Share of working students
