TO FIND OR NOT TO FIND A FIRST “SIGNIFICANT ” JOB*

In this paper we look at school-to-work transitions in Spain. We distin-guish between significant and non-significant jobs and show that educa-tional investment enhances access to a first significant job compared to a non-significant one. We also find strong differences between men and women: education attainment provides a clearer differentiating device for women than for men, whatever field of education females choose. These results are tested and confirmed by a multinomial probit model of the probability of achieving both significant and non-significant jobs and by a discrete time duration model of the probability of achieving a sig-nificant job. Key words: School-to-work transition, job search, youth labour market. JEL classification: J13, J60. T he European Union, through the goals of the Social Policy Agenda and theguidelines of the Lisbon Strategy, is increasingly focusing on the quality ofemployment (European Commission, 2002), because non-standard arrange-ments (short-term, short working weeks) are becoming more and more fre-quent, particularly among the young. The Spanish labour market is an out-standing example: although part-time rates are rather low by European standards (no more than 10 % of youths under 25 work part-time), youths get very unstabl