The Results of Employment of Ural Federal District University & Vocational Education Graduates in the Russian Labour Market

The school-to-work transition is considered to be one of the most important milestones for young people. Besides having a significant amount of potential in the beginning of their career, they also might be extremely vulnerable in the labour market due to numerous reasons. The main focus of this research is on the relationship between the graduates’ characteristics (e.g. demographic, educational) and their earnings. The paper employs the new dataset provided by the Federal Service for Labour and Employment (Rostrud). It includes the information about Ural Federal District university and vocational education graduates of the year 2019. The data was collected administratively in November 2020. The research is based on the descriptive and regression analyses, providing the estimation of the Mincerian earnings equation using the OLS method and Heckman selection model. The regression analysis has revealed that the differences in wages related to the level of education still take place in the labour market: on average, Bachelors earn 14.1% higher salaries than vocational education graduates, 7.4% less than Specialists and 14.8% less than Masters. Having a diploma with honours gives graduates a wage premium of 4.1–6.8%. Moreover, the analysis has confirmed that there are wage differences that depend on the region of employment. It was also revealed that Bachelors and Specialists whose alma mater is Ural Federal University earn 5.9% higher salaries than those who graduated from ordinary universities (the ones that do not participate in state programs). Thus, the current paper might be useful for further research on graduate employment, both on regional and country levels.