Do Apprenticeships Increase Youth Employability in Romania? A Propensity Score Matching Approach

The paper aims at bringing together two main current research interests: youth employability on the one hand, and use of econometric techniques in order to evaluate the impact of different policy measures, on the other hand. The topic of youth employability is very actual for Romanian labour market, as early school-leaving and the rate of youth not in employment, education or training are among the highest in EU and show no sign of going to decrease significantly on medium and long term. Work-based leaning, as apprenticeship or internship programs are lately promoted as efficient measures to address both the need for a better school-to-work transition, as well as a better education-job match. The paper provides some insights regarding the youth experience of apprenticeship in Romania and empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that work-based programs could increase youth employability. The empirical findings where obtained through a counterfactual approach, by applying the propensity score matching technique on a sample of respondents selected from the Flash Eurobarometer 378 dataset. Our results confirm a low but positive impact of apprenticeships on youth employment in Romania. Also, the analyses confirm that apprenticeships address more to low educated young persons, so the impact of the programs is even more relevant as could be an effective measure for increasing youth employability of disadvantaged youth.