The effect of fields of study on the waiting time to employment: evidence from the National Graduate Survey of Canada 2005 and 2009/10 cohorts

ABSTRACT

By utilising the National Graduate Survey (NGS) – class of 2005 and 2009/10 – this paper examines the effects of fields of study on the time it takes to find full-time employment that lasts at least six months among graduates of Canadian Universities. Within cohorts, the results suggest considerable differences in the duration to first job after graduation for various fields of study – with ‘Agriculture, natural resources and conservation’, ‘Health and related fields’, and STEM fields like Math, Computer Science, and Engineering landing jobs the quickest, respectively. In contrast, the graduates of ‘Humanities’ and ‘Education’ had the longest duration of finding employment. The results also show large differences between cohorts, with the 2009/10 cohort taking much longer to find employment. Lastly, this paper did not find clear evidence that the effects of fields of study on the duration to exiting unemployment changed across the cohorts.

KEYWORDS:

• Fields of study
• employment
• survival analysis
• NGS

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted at the McGill-Concordia Laboratory of the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics (QICSS), which is part of the Canadian Research Dara Centre Network (CRDCN). The views expressed in this paper are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the CRDCN, the QICSSS or their partners.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

Data used to support the findings of this study are not available due to the ethical, privacy and security concern(s).

Notes

1. Unfortunately, the 2018 wave (or the 2015 cohort), which is the latest wave of the NGS, had a number of issues (e.g. a non-numeric metric of time and the absence of some essential variables for the purpose of conducting survival analysis). Any attempt at constructing survival analysis data from this wave would have produced incommensurable outcomes with the two previous waves. Because of such issues, I decided not to include the 2018 wave as part of this project.

2. Note that in the KM curves, covariates are not adjusted.

3. The unemployment rates were lower when only bachelor’s degree holders were considered, with an average unemployment rate of 4.25% between 2005 and 2006, and 5.2% for 2009 and 2010. The unemployment rate for this group returned to its pre-recession levels only after 2013.

4. There is some evidence that recent university graduates hold occupations that traditionally did not require a college degree, which can be linked to credential inflation (Hollister 2014). So, a faster duration to a job does not necessarily mean a ‘better’ (or a matched) job.

Additional information

Funding

No financial support was received during the completion of this research paper.

Notes on contributors

Komin Qiyomiddin

Komin Qiyomiddin is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at McGill University. His research focuses on the role that academic fields of study play in shaping the relationship between postsecondary graduates and their immediate and long-term labour market outcomes. He has solid knowledge in designing and implementing advanced quantitative research methods to address sociological questions concerning the transition from school to work for postsecondary graduates.