A mobility analysis of the occupational status of the graduates of the University of Palermo in an economic crisis context

Abstract

In such a global economic crisis context, our aims are describing the mobility of the Palermitan graduates in the labour market, identifying the variables that influence most their occupational status and finally outlining a transition probability structure among the states: Work, Search for a Job, Study, Other. The availability of a large amount of longitudinal data provided by the surveys carried out by STELLA (Statistics about Graduates and Labour Market) allowed us to analyze the mobility of the graduates of the University of Palermo among the different occupational states in three different times. We analyze data coming from a disproportionate stratified sample of graduates in 2009, interviewed three different times: one year (2010), three years (2012), five years (2014) after the graduation. To achieve our aim, first we provide a brief descriptive analysis of the main characteristics of the graduates gathered by the three different surveys; secondly we fit a time inhomogeneous multi-state Markov model with piecewise constant intensities; eventually implications from the main results are discussed.