Labour market entry and beyond: some reflections on the changing structure of work

Abstract

This article raises the question of how recent labour market developments affect the transition from school to work (i.e. labour market entry) and the successive employment career. The focus of interest are countries characterised by well‐established and wide‐spread vocational training systems, constituting strong institutionalised links between the educational and the employment systems (i.e. Austria, Germany and Switzerland). The arguments advanced show that the changing structure of work (i.e. the shifting nature of work, the decrease in the temporal validity of skills and the changing cultural significance of work) is likely to modify the well‐established interplay between the supply and demand sides in the labour markets of these countries, thus exerting considerable pressure on the stability and orderliness of employment trajectories. Against this background, the most critical issues of vocational training systems are described and reforms of these systems are discussed.