Working Students and job market outcomes: Insights from the University of Florence

Does having been a working student during the higher education studies matter for future job market outcomes? This article addresses this question by analysing administrative data, matching individual-level data on the career of students at the University of Florence, Italy, with records on employment contracts for the same students from the Italian Ministry of Labor. A survival analysis for ordered events is employed in order to estimate the risk of stipulating hierarchical-ranked types of employment contracts. Coherently with expectations, it turns out that former working students graduates exhibit a positive risk of being employed in a shorter time. Moreover, students from lyceums are more likely to obtain a higher-skilled contract.