Visualising school-to-work pathways using LSAY

Introduction

This data visualisation presents the school-to-work pathways of young Australians aged 16 to 25. The data is from an NCVER study, School-to-work pathways.

Please note: this visualisation is best viewed in the Chrome, Firefox and Edge browsers.

This study is based on a sample of 3186 respondents who completed all ten surveys until 2016 of the 2006 Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY Y06). Note that the analysis findings are restricted to the study sample and are not fully generalisable to the general population of 16 to 25-year-old Australians.

The sequence and cluster analysis uncovered five distinct pathways followed by these young people:

• Pathway 1: Higher education to full-time work (60% of the sample)
  Extended period of post-school higher education followed by employment.
• Pathway 2: Early entry to full-time work* (23% of the sample)
  An ‘express pathway’ to employment. Short spell of post-school education or training leading to full-time work, including as part of an apprenticeship.
• Pathway 3: Mix of higher education and VET (8% of the sample)
  An extended period of higher education or vocational education and training (VET) eventually leading to more stable employment or further VET activity
• Pathway 4: Mixed and repeatedly disengaged (5% of the sample)
  Frequent spells of unemployment or disengagement.
• Pathway 5: Mostly working part-time (4% of the sample)
  Relatively early entry to the labour market and mostly employed part-time.

* For many, VET likely extends beyond early post-school years, undertaken jointly in combination with full-time work as part of an apprenticeship/traineeship.

To find out more about the methodology and data, including how the pathways are defined, please refer to the research report School-to-work pathways.

• Each circle represents approximately three people and shows the movement between different monthly education and employment activities of young people.
• The percentages indicate the proportion of young people undertaking an activity at a given month.
• Unemployed refers to people who are not working but are looking for work. Not in labour force refers to those who are not working, not in education or training, and not looking for work.

The graphs below show the change in the profile of young people within each pathway undertaking the different education and employment activities between the ages 16 and 25 in the 10 years from 2006 to 2016.

The height of each graph reflects the proportion of young people in the study sample undertaking each activity at a given time.

Press play to watch the progress over the 10-year period. Select to toggle between the pathways.

This information should be attributed as Marshall, K, Mlotkowski, P, Chew, E, & Ranasinghe, R 2019, Visualising school-to-work pathways using LSAY, NCVER, Adelaide.

Data source:
Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY Y06)