“Too shocked to search” The COVID-19 shutdowns’ impact on the search for apprenticeships

Abstract

Even though the recession in Switzerland triggered by COVID-19 ultimately remained without consequences for the apprenticeship market, significantly fewer apprenticeship contracts had been signed in the months of the first shutdown in 2020 than in the same months of the previous year. Using daily search queries on the national administrative platform for apprenticeship vacancies from February 2020 until April 2021 as a proxy for the supply of potential apprentices, we find a temporal pattern that coincides perfectly with the development of signed apprenticeship contracts. Furthermore, the analyses show that the initially very strong relationship between the intensity of the politically imposed restrictions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the daily search queries diminished over time, leading to a search intensity in March 2021 that was back at pre-pandemic level.

Reaching for Gold! The Impact of a Positive Reputation Shock on Career Choice

“…We additionally control for the time in which the 2022 WorldSkills competitions took place. Moreover, previous work (Goller & Wolter, 2021) showed a high and robust statistical correlation between our measure of the supply of apprentices with school vacations and public holidays. To additionally account for fluctuations on the demand side, we also control for the number of open vacancies by day, occupation, and canton in a separate specification.…”

“…WorldSkills (https://worldskills.org) is both the name of the world championship of vocational skills and the organization that coordinates the contests. 8 We do not use the 2019 WorldSkills championship as its' potential impact was overshadowed by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which had a temporary but substantial negative impact on the supply of apprentices (Goller & Wolter, 2021). offered in Switzerland, e.g., '3D Digital Game Art' or 'Aircraft Maintenance,' for some professions, there are multiple (specialized) contests, e.g., both 'CNC Milling' and 'CNC Turning' are skills one learns when becoming a 'Polymechanic.'…”

“…We added information on bank holidays, as well as on school holidays in each canton. This is combined 9 This data set was first used to analyze the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on search activities of adolescents during and after the school closures imposed by the measures to fight the pandemic (Goller & Wolter, 2021). 10 berufsberatung.ch (de; fr: orientation.ch; it: orientamento.ch) is the official platform of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education for information about and search for apprenticeship positions.…”

Economics and economists during the COVID-19 pandemic: a personal view

“…While it was undisputed that the young generation was heavily restricted by confining measures, Goller and Wolter (2021) demonstrate that the recession in Switzerland triggered by COVID-19 ultimately remained without consequences for the apprenticeship market. The authors use daily search queries on the national administrative platform for apprenticeship vacancies from February 2020 until April 2021 as a proxy for the supply of potential apprentices.…”

“…International research shows that behavioural adjustments were, to a large degree, responsible for the economic downturn in the first wave. Ignoring the negative impact of the international economy, authors estimate the share of the downturn due to voluntary measures in a range from 50 to 90% (Andersen et al, 2020;Aum et al, 2021;Goolsbee & Syverson, 2021).…”