The transition from higher education to employment in Europe: the analysis of the time to obtain the first job MANUEL SALAS-VELASCO Facultad de Ciencias de la Educacio ´n, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain Abstract. This paper investigates the determinants of the transition from higher education to work across Europe using various specifications of duration models and a one-time multi-country survey of university graduates from nine European countries. Results point to differences between the North and South of Europe in the difficulty of getting a first job. They confirm that individual characteristics such as the field/level of studies or the socioeconomic background, and individual job search bear a significant relationship to the probability of finding a job. Evidence of unobserved heterogeneity is also found. Keywords: graduate labor market, survival analysis, transition to first employment. Introduction 1 Young people’s transition from education to working life can be ana- lyzed using a number of different data collections. In the United States, the Department of Education has sponsored a number of longitudinal surveys that follow students from high school to further education, employment, or non-employment. For example, the National Educa- tion Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) began with a cohort of students who were in the 8th grade (about 13 years old) in 1988. This dataset and follow-ups provide an excellent opportunity to examine a number of issues pertinent to transitions, including transition to post- secondary education and work. In Europe, in order to improve the availability of data on young people’s transition from school to work, EUROSTAT introduced a topical module on transitions into the Labour Force Survey 2000 in 14 EU member states. This complement to the EU LFS 2000 provides information on the first job, current educational level, and unemployment experience of those aged 15–35 years old completing initial education within the previous Higher Education (2007) 54:333–360 Ó Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10734-006-9000-1