Good Occupation – Bad Occupation? The Quality of Apprenticeship Training

Small average wage effects of employer and/or occupation changes after apprenticeship training mask large differences between occupation groups and apprentices with different schooling back-grounds. Apprentices in commerce and trading occupations strongly profit from an employer change. Employer and occupation changers in industrial occupations face large wage disadvantages, however. We are the first to analyse these differences while those quality differences between training firms that have been widely studied before are small. This paper also explains differences between previous findings by comparing their empirical estimation strategies. It demonstrates that selectivity into occupations and changers, unobserved heterogeneity between occupations, and sample selection matter. Finally, it proposes several improvements in the estimation technique to measure apprenticeship quality.