Analysis of the Graduate Labour Market in Finland: Spatial Agglomeration and Skill–Job Match

Abstract

Abstract. During the 1990s Finland's economy went from deep recession to becoming among the most innovative and competitive within merely a decade. Economic recovery driven by the surge of ICT-related industries with the active support of the higher education system gave way also to growing inequalities among regions, especially within graduate workers. The paper elaborates an empirical analysis of the returns to education of a cohort entering the labour force between 1995 and 2005; our objective is to capture the extent of spatial and occupational determinants on income distribution as Finland slid from its most troubled to most prosperous times.

Education–Job (Mis)Match and Interregional Migration: Italian University Graduates' Transition to Work

“…Whilst the importance of education-job match at the individual and systemic levels have been recognised as critical to understand the evolutionary mechanisms of learning and knowledge creation processes (Healy and Morgan, 2009;Rodríguez-Pose andTselios 2011, 2012;Consoli et al, 2013), more needs to be done to fully appreciate how geography shapes these phenomena.…”

“…A regional system with a strong knowledge base will thus benefit more from a highly skilled labour force than a backward one, as, for higher education investment to translate into local socio-economic benefits, the knowledge embodied in graduates needs to match or complement that embedded in the region (e.g. Frenken et al, 2007;Faggian and McCann, 2009;Rodriguez-Pose and Tselios, 2011;Kraber and Flöther, 2012;Consoli et al, 2013).…”

“…By showing that geography shapes the relationship between migration and education-job match, this paper provides critical insights to the field, further supporting the need to look at migration not simply as a mechanism for labour reallocation but also in terms of the knowledge flows it generates Italy, with its marked sub-national disparities and increasing internal graduate migration, allows important insights to emerge, by framing the phenomenon under scrutiny against the geographical context that produce and employ graduate skills. The exercise adds novel empirical evidence to a crucial area of research and policy interest, so far largely investigated with reference to Anglo-Saxon or Northern European countries (Consoli et al, 2013).…”

Graduate migration and regional development: an international perspective

“…Indeed, a region's human capital is one of the strongest predictors of sustained economic vitality (Abel and Deitz, 2012), as it is linked to increases in economic and population growth, wages, income and innovation (Florida et al, 2008). Empirical evidence suggests that local development is fostered by the presence of a skilled labour pool, which generates knowledge spill-overs and human capital externalities in turn increasing productivity and high-technology activities (Consoli et al, 2013). Ahlin et al (2014) find that the spatial distribution of human capital is vital in explaining the long-term dynamics of the geography of jobs, incomes and well-being.…”

That Was then, this is Now: Skills and Routinization in the 2000s.

“…This paper focuses on one particular mechanism through which knowledge is applied to economic ends, namely, employment. Arguably, besides sporadic bursts of interest (e.g., Nelson and Phelps 1966;Freeman and Perez, 1988;Amendola and Vona, 2012;Consoli et al, 2013;Boschma et al, 2014), the workings of labor markets and the relationship between human labor and technology have not been fully integrated into the intellectual apparatus of innovation studies.…”