Turbulent Transitions from School to Work in Canada

There has been considerable interest in the transition from school to work, some of it reflected in discussions of the NEET concept (those not in employment, education, or training). This interest has been consecrated in the OECD’s decision to publish NEET estimates for member states. Statistics Canada’s Youth in Transition Survey provides unusually high quality information on transitions. It sampled high school students who were 15 in 1999 and gathered annual data on them until the end of the survey in 2008. The data provide ten years of monthly information on the following: whether or not employed, whether or not unemployed, whether or not in education, and whether or not out of the labour force for reasons other than education, as well as earnings when employed and a number of potentially relevant issues (performance in high school, parents’ education and occupation, and so on). In this paper we: i) describe the transition patterns of the sample; ii) estimate the effects of different transition categories on employment outcomes, including earnings.