Explaining employment sector choices of doctoral graduates in Germany

Previous research in different national contexts has shown that individual preferences for certain job attributes, objective labour market conditions, subjective career prospects, and external encouragement shape doctoral graduates’ career decisions. For Germany, where the number of awarded doctoral degrees is highest within the European Union and where no established academic tenure-track system exists, the determinants of doctoral graduates’ sector choices are still largely unexplored. This article aims to shed light on the determinants of sector choices of doctoral graduates in Germany. By deriving the determinants from the wide version of rational choice theory and by measuring the determinants prior to employment sectors, we overcome the conceptual and methodological limitations of previous research. Using data from a nationally representative panel survey with doctoral graduates of the 2014 cohort in Germany, we differentiate between five distinct employment sectors and carry out multinomial logistic regression analysis. As expected, and in line with previous research from other countries, the results confirm that the sector choices of doctoral graduates in Germany depend on their preferences as well as various objective and subjective constraints. The article helps to better understand how doctoral graduates select into different employment sectors and thus provides important insights into postdoctoral career trajectories.