Transition strategies and labour market integration of Greek university graduates

Greece has today the highest youth unemployment rate in the EU-27 while employment precariousness is disproportionately concentrated among young workers. Youth unemployment and employment precariousness are extremely high even among higher education graduates, generating a very long period of transition from education to work. Protracted transition calls for the development of diverse strategies for successful labour market integration before and after graduation. In this paper we use micro-data from a nation-wide survey conducted in 2005 to examine the incidence of different transition strategies among Greek university graduates, assess their effectiveness for successful labour market integration 5-7 years after graduation and test if the findings conform to the southern European pattern of labour market entry advanced by comparative socio-economic literature. The theoretical framework of our analysis is that of labour market segmentation and job competition theory in a context of high unemployment and imperfect information.