ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that schooling lays a curse on prospective workers predisposing them to unemployment, in contrast to an abundant literature on the theme “more schooling means more earnings”. It shows that schooling - in the way it has been provided in the four countries studied - seems to throw up certain obstacles to the immediate entry of school-leavers and university graduates into employment. The characteristic approach was to make schools, or a large part of them, more “vocational” when unemployment went from bad to worse. In many cases the rates are well within the range associated with frictional unemployment, i.e. brief periods of unemployment that allow workers to move to better jobs. The overall statistical effect is like that of prolonged military service which smooths out the entry and re-entry of large numbers of school-leavers to the labour market.
