Determinants of professional paths of university graduates in morocco: longitudinal study

Abstract

This study focuses on the professional paths during the thirty-six months following graduation from the university in 2009. This promotion is the only one for which monthly longitudinal data are available and which allow dynamic monitoring of graduates since leaving university. It is therefore appropriate to analyze the professional path or a process of integration in the market labor. The study is intended to be a monograph of the different paths and successions of employment status, studies, unemployment, and inactivity, leading or not to job stabilization, using a recent classification method (optimal matching). This research also relied on a multinomial logit model to analyze the different factors contributing to belonging to a given professional trajectory.

In this analysis, we construct six typical professional paths, namely, trajectories marked by immediate access to employment and professional stabilization, access to employment after periods of unemployment, obtaining a job after studies or inactivity, persistence of unemployment, persistence of inactivity and dominance of periods of further study. In addition, the analysis of the individual determinants of the belonging of university graduates’ to the different typical paths leads to the importance of the role of the socio-demographic and academic characteristics of the graduate. The first result is the persistence of inequalities between men and women. Family characteristics also determine the paths of graduates, for example, the high level of education of parents promotes rapid access to employment. Finally, the diploma is a crucial factor of access to employment. Holders of BAC + 3 diplomas are the most exposed to the risk of unemployment.

JEL Classification : C23, C25, J22 

Paper type: Empirical research