Several studies have examined how military-provided training affects post-service employment experience, but this study is the first to investigate that relationship for young men and women who enlisted in the "all-volunteer" era that began in 1974. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey-Youth Cohort, the authors find that the transfer of skills to civilian employment was as high for military training as for civilian training (45-50 percent), once employer-provided training is excluded from consideration. Furthermore, within two years of their return to civilian life, those who received military training had higher earnings than those who received training in the civilian sector-a finding that contrasts with the results of studies of Vietnam veterans, but agrees with the results found for veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict.
The question of military-provided training and its transferability to civilian employment has received much media attention lately. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys-Youth Cohort, this paper documents sizable amounts of skill transfer and compares the transferability of military-provided training to that of nonmilitary-provided postschool occupational training. When other factors are controlled, the probability of transferring military-provided training does not differ significantly from that of non-military training obtained from providers such as proprietary business colleges and vocational/technical schools. On the other hand, the probability of skill transfer for military-provided training is found to be significantly lower than that of apprenticeship and employer-provided training for both sexes, and of nursing and beauty-school training for females; however, these differences can be attributed to institutional linkages between training provider and employer along internal labor-market lines.
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