Higher qualifications no longer a guarantee of success

25 February 2010

The current generation of highly qualified individuals have less guarantees for becoming successful on the labour market than the highly qualified generations before them. Furthermore, for the younger generations careers have become less stable and more vulnerable. Dutch-sponsored researcher Anna Manzoni demonstrated this in her unique study of mobility on the labour market. According to her, many of the earlier studies in this area were too limited.

Anna Manzoni made a detailed study of how the careers of different generations of Germans, Dutch and British have changed over the past few decades. Careers were found to be less stable now than before. This especially concerns women who increasingly participate on the labour market. Although fewer women now compared to the older generations take (long) career breaks to care for their offspring after the birth of a child, many of them still experience great difficulty in regaining their previous position on the career ladder after the break.

Good preparation essential

Investing in training and experience is worth the effort and often leads to a better career. However, this does mean that outsiders on the employment market, such as the lower qualified, find it harder to get a job and change jobs more often. Careers are becoming increasingly more volatile and consequently more vulnerable as well. According to Manzoni it is therefore worth studying how careers develop in different contexts over the course of time.

For her research Manzoni used prospective data, the same people each year were presented with the same questions about their work in the previous year (panel data), and retrospective data, for which people at different points in time were asked about their career history (life course data), to gain a better understanding of how careers develop from start to finish. Consequently her results are more reliable than those of previous analyses. According to Manzoni the life course data are far more useful than people think. People are surprisingly good at reconstructing the course of their lives. By examining a lot of material, researchers can easily discover and correct errors in the reports.

Anna Manzoni carried out her research with a grant from the Free Competition of the NWO Division for the Social Sciences and recently gained her doctorate from Tilburg University. With the Free Competition, NWO seeks to stimulate innovative scientific research of a high quality. Proposals can be submitted across the full range of subjects covered by the division.

About NWO

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) is the principal Dutch science funding body and its mission is to facilitate excellent scientific research in the Netherlands by means of national competition. Each year NWO spends more than 700 million euro on grants for top researchers, on innovative instruments and equipment, and on institutes where top research is performed. NWO funds the research of more than 5300 talented researchers at universities and institutes. Independent experts select proposals by means of a peer review system. NWO facilitates the transfer of knowledge to society.
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For further information:

• Dr Anna Manzoni (Yale University)
• t.: +1 203 432 5281, anna.manzoni@gmail.com
• The doctoral thesis was defended on 19 February 2010
• Supervisors: Prof. Ruud Muffels and Dr Ruud Luijkx