A longitudinal analysis of the occupational status of the graduates of the University of Palermo

The availability of a large amount of longitudinal data provided by the surveys carried out by STELLA (Statistics about Graduates and Labour Market) allowed us to describe the occupational paths of graduates of the University of Palermo. In this paper we refer to a disproportionate stratified sample of graduates in 2009, interviewed three dierent times: one year (2010), three years (2012), ve years (2014) after the graduation. In such a global economic crises context, our aims are describing the labour market of the Palermitan graduates, identifying the variables that influence most their occupational status and nally outlining a transition probability structure among the states: Work, Search for a Job, Study, Other. To achieve our aim, first we provide a brief descriptive analysis of the main characteristics of the graduates gathered by the three different surveys; secondly we fit a time inhomogeneous multi-state Markov model with piecewise constant intensities; eventually we try to give a measure of goodness of fit of the model, comparing the results with the observed frequencies.