Ethnic background and the transition from education to work among university graduates

This paper focuses on the transition from education to work among Master's-level university graduates in Norway and examines the differences in labour-market success among ethnic groups. The dependent variables used are the rate of transition to first regular employment and the annual wage in that job. The data are collected from several public register databases, and include the entire population of graduates from Norwegian universities in the period from 1993 to 2002 (N = 34,702). The methods employed are Cox regression and linear regression. The findings indicate that the time from school completion to first regular employment is longer for those with an ethnic minority background compared to native Norwegians. This disadvantage applies particularly to people originating from Africa, who also earn significantly less than native Norwegians in their first job. However, no wage disadvantage is found among other ethnic groups. In addition, there are some differences when field of education is taken into account. People originating from Asia have a faster transition rate to employment when educated in communicative and cultural fields.