Abstract
This article examines class-specific employment patterns among students in Germany, taking into account how different local labour market conditions affect the quantity and quality of jobs available to students. We argue that the availability of jobs affects social inequalities in student employment. In particular, we expect a stronger correlation between, on the one hand, the rate and quality of student employment and, on the other hand, students’ socioeconomic background in towns with a large pool of student labour, due to more competition for (good) jobs. Analysing data from German student surveys, we find that employment rates do not differ by social class background, but there are differences in the quality of their employment in terms of the fit between the job and the field of study. While we find that local labour market conditions affect student employment at a general level, in contrast to our expectation, tighter labour market conditions seem to involve little or no disadvantage for students from less privileged social backgrounds.
Highlights
In many countries, enrolment in higher education is still socially selective1
While we find that local labour market conditions affect student employment at a general level, in contrast to our expectation, tighter labour market conditions seem to involve little or no disadvantage for students from less privileged social backgrounds
Unlike the influence of social origin on student employment rates, social origin is significantly associated with the quality of students’ jobs
Summary
Enrolment in higher education is still socially selective. With increasing shares of a cohort enrolling into higher education and a more heterogeneous student population in higher education, more and more scholars have pointed to important “qualitative” inequalities among university students, such as combining education with work (for Germany see for example Jacob et al 2018; for the US see Scott-Clayton 2012; Weiss and Roksa 2016). When students from such backgrounds do opt to work, we expect other, non-monetary aspects to be important in this decision and that they will only accept “quality” jobs, such as jobs related to their field of study They often have the edge over students from less privileged families in terms of opportunities to enter high-quality employment. Students with loftier social origins may withdraw, at least from the unskilled, lowpaid labour market, which offers no qualification-related returns, as they do not need to work For those students who do work, those from a higher social background have an advantage in the recruitment process as they might appear more suitable to employers due to their social and cultural capital We expect social origin effects on employment rates and job quality to be more pronounced in crowded labour markets (labour market hypothesis)
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