Youth Transition from School to Work in Spain

Using a data set drawn from the Encuesta Socio-Demografica conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica in 1991, we analyze the labor market entrance of Spanish school leavers and the match between education and work at the early stages of working life. The empirical evidence shows that human capital exerts a strong influence on the duration of unemployment. With regard to the job match between education and work we find that young workers are more likely to be underutilized compared to their adult co-workers. Regression results indicate that people with higher education have, all else being equal, a lower probability of being overeducated and a shorter lenght of unemployment. They also show the poor performance of upper secondary education ; a key problem in the Spanish educational system.