The Survey on the Labour Insertion of University Graduates aims to investigate the transition of university graduates to the labour market: to obtain data and references on the quality of the labour insertion of the population with a degree in Spanish universities, to know the conditions with which they access the labour market, the adaptation of the studies to the work they carry out, the type of contract or mobility. In short, a set of indicators that make it possible to know the situation of this group and relate it to the degree they have completed.
This study has been carried out on a population constituted by graduates of the Spanish university system, throughout the national territory. With regard to the temporal scope, it has been considered that it is necessary around three years from the end of the studies, to stabilise the employment situation. For this reason, we have taken as a study group the graduates in the 2013-2014 academic year, to conduct the survey in 2019.
The variables studied have been classified into four groups: those related to the level of education of the graduate, how was the process of incorporation into the labour market, the suitability of the knowledge acquired and personal skills for the work developed and geographical mobility.
The EILU-2019 uses the National Classification of Education (NCED-2014) to code the field of study to which the degree carried out by the interviewee corresponds.
Likewise, for the classification of the different jobs performed, the National Classification of Occupations (NCO-11) has been used and for the classification of the economic activity of the company, the CNAE 2009.
The population under study are university graduates (including 1st and 2nd cycle graduates) and University Master's graduates of the 2013-2014 academic year at a Spanish university, that is, levels 61, 62, 71, 72 and 73 of the National Classification of Education (CNED-A 2014).
The basic statistical unit is the graduate in the Spanish university system in the 2013-2014 academic year.
The population scope of this statistic is constituted by all graduates of the Spanish university system for the 2013-2014 academic year.
The territorial scope is comprised of all the universities in the national territory.
The temporal scope is the year 2019.
This is the second edition of this survey, the base period is 2014.
The unit of measurement is the university graduate (those who have obtained more than one degree in the same reference year have been counted once in each of the degrees they have obtained). Two groups are included: Bachelor's degree graduates and Master's degree graduates.
Relative figures are expressed in %.
The unit of measurement of the table of the lower limits of the quintiles of the contribution bases for employed persons is the euro.
The period of time to which the data refer varies according to the nature of the variables to be investigated. The reference period is the time of the interview (the collection period was from July to December 2019), or from the time of completion of education in the year 2014 to the time of the interview (for variables of employment insertion of university graduates).
Data referred to the period: EILU-2019
The compilation and dissemination of the data are governed by the Statistical Law No. 12/1989 "Public Statistical Function" of May 9, 1989, and Law No. 4/1990 of June 29 on “National Budget of State for the year 1990" amended by Law No. 13/1996 "Fiscal, administrative and social measures" of December 30, 1996, makes compulsory all statistics included in the National Statistics Plan. The National Statistical Plan 2009-2012 was approved by the Royal Decree 1663/2008. It contains the statistics that must be developed in the four year period by the State General Administration's services or any other entity dependent on it. All statistics included in the National Statistics Plan are statistics for state purposes and are obligatory. The National Statistics Plan 2021-2024, approved by Royal Decree 1110/2020, of 15 December, is the Plan currently implemented. This statistical operation has governmental purposes, and it is included in the National Statistics Plan 2021-2024. (Statistics of the State Administration).
This Statistical Operation has been included in the National Statistical Plan 2017-2020 complying with one of the recommendations made by the High Council on Statistics on national statistical needs in the education sector.
Various sources of administrative information have been used to carry out this statistical operation on the basis of the following agreements:
- Cooperation agreement between the INE and the General Secretariat of Universities for the use of the Integrated University Information System
- Cooperation agreement between the SS and the INE in statistical matters for the use of the file of Affiliations and Bases of Contribution of the General Treasury of the Social Security
- Cooperation agreement between the INE- IMSERSO- CERMI- MSSSI- ONCE Foundation for the use of the State Base of Persons with Disabilities (BEPD).
In this statistical operation, data from administrative registers have been used, such as the Integrated University Information System (General Secretariat of Universities), files on Affiliations and Contribution Bases (Social Security), Register of Inhabitants and Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad - PERE (INE), files on Contracts and Vocational Training Applicants of the Public State Employment Service (SEPE) and the State Base of Persons with Disabilities (BEPD)
In the process of performing the statistical operation the safeguarding of confidentiality is a priority issue and something to take into account in each and every phase of the statistical process, especially in the dissemination, where individual information must have a special protection to avoid disclosure without anonymising.
This is the second edition of the Survey of Labour Insertion of University Graduates (EILU) carried out by the INE, the first having been conducted in 2014.
From 2019 the survey will run for four years..
A press release was released when the data were published in October 2020. It is available at https://ine.es/prensa/eilu_2019.pdf
The information provided is the following:
FINAL DATA:
Absolute and relative figures, for Bachelor's graduates and Master's graduates:
INEbase is the system the INE uses to store statistical information on the Internet. It contains all the information the INE produces in electronic formats. The primary organisation of the information follows the theme-based classification of the Inventory of Statistical Operations of the State General Administration . The basic unit of INEbase is the statistical operation, defined as the set of activities that lead to obtaining statistical results on a determined sector or subject based on the individually collected data. Also included in the scope of this definition are synthesis preparation.
The results of this statistical operation can be consulted in the section "Education" under "Society" at INEbase in the following link:
The EILU 2019 anonymous microdata file is available on the INE website:
https://www.ine.es/en/prodyser/microdatos_en.htm
In order to guarantee confidentiality, certain variables have been eliminated (name and surname, country of birth, Autonomous Community... in addition to all the variables included in some of the literals).
This section only makes available for downloading the microdata files that do not include the variables of Autonomous Communities (AC of the university of study, AC of the first employment, AC of the current employment, AC of the destination of the first change of residence). For reasons of control and confidentiality, the microdata files in which these variables are included will only be provided free of charge under special conditions in the User Assistance Area. If you wish, you can contact this Area through the enquiry form: www.ine.es/infoine.
Interested users may request, through the INE Dissemination Area, any specific consultation or use of information as it is carried out, preserving in all cases the confidentiality of the data.
A detailed description is available at:
The INE carries out two specific analyses to assess the quality of the EILU data. First, sampling errors are obtained and published together with the tabulation of results. And secondly, a non-response analysis is carried out and published on the website. Both results can be found on the dissemination page of the EILU results:
In addition, the following sections of this methodological report (items 10.2 to 17.2) constitute the user-oriented global quality report for this operation.
Quality assurance framework for the INE statistics is based on the ESSCoP, the European Statistics Code of Practice made by EUROSTAT. The ESSCoP is made up of 16 principles, gathered in three areas: Institutional Environment, Processes and Products. Each principle is associated with some indicators which make possible to measure it. In order to evaluate quality, EUROSTAT provides different tools: the indicators mentioned above, Self-assessment based on the DESAP model, peer review, user satisfaction surveys and other proceedings for evaluation.
The Survey of Labour Insertion of University Graduates has established a series of mechanisms that contribute to guaranteeing the quality of the process and the results. Among them are the following:
- Data collection through CAWI and CATI applications with implementation of errors and warnings of incompatibility or incongruence between the survey responses in order to perform a first field cleaning at the time of data collection.
- Comprehensive testing of electronic questionnaires (CAWI and CATI) in order to verify the controls of inconsistencies in the responses.
- Specific training for interviewers with the participation and advice of experts from the National Statistics Institute.
- Periodic inspection of field work.
- Comprehensive review of the coding of questions that require it (current occupation and first job).
- Control of errors and warnings after the collection in order to corroborate the correct functioning of the applications and avoid systemic errors in the collection.
- Use of administrative records (Affiliations and Contribution Bases of the Social Security General Treasury; Contracts and Vocational Training Applicants of the Public State Employment Service) to assist in coding, validating and completing the information provided by the reporting units.
According to the measures implemented in the process of collection and cleaning of results described in the previous section, the strengths of the survey are:
- the absence of errors and inconsistencies between the responses to the questionnaire thanks to the CAWI-CATI questionnaires and a first cleaning in the field.
- acceptable level of responses provided by proxy (1.2% of the total of Bachelor's graduates and 0.8% of the total of Master's graduates).
- Adequate classification according to the occupation variables in the first job and in the current job due to its comprehensive cleaning.
- Results calibrated by sex, degree, university, field of study, branch of knowledge, disability, residents of the PERE and nationality.
- Use of administrative sources to reduce the burden of questions to the respondent and to help the cleaning process. Affiliations and Bases of Contribution of the General Treasury of the Social Security; Contracts and Vocational Training Applicants of the Public State Employment Service (SEPE).
- Use of the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad (PERE) to obtain the address of respondents resident outside Spain.
- Cross-checking of the sample with the State Database of Persons with Disabilities (BEPD) to obtain estimates for this group.
Among the users of the survey, are:
The INE has carried out general user satisfaction surveys in 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019 and it plans to continue doing so every three years. The purpose of these surveys is to find out what users think about the quality of the information of the INE statistics and the extent to which their needs of information are covered. In addition, additional surveys are carried out in order to acknowledge better other fields such as dissemination of the information, quality of some publications...
On the INE website, in its section Methods and Projects / Quality and Code of Practice / INE quality management / User surveys are available surveys conducted to date.(Click next link)
User satisfaction surveys collect information for groups of statistics that can be seen on the INE website, in the Quality section-->Quality management-->Quality assessment and monitoring systems-->User surveys.
The survey is not regulated by a European directive. Although there is no European harmonization in this statistical field, with this new operation Spain joins other countries that analyse the labour insertion of higher education graduates such as Italy, France, United Kingdom, Sweden or Canada.
The requirements are determined by the needs of the main users. In this sense, the information required by the National Statistical Plan is collected in a complete manner.
Ultimately, the survey provides all the required information, so the "rate of available mandatory statistical results" will be R1=100%.
The sample design tries to minimise sampling errors and the different processes of the survey are aimed at eliminating or reducing, as far as possible, its errors, both in the collection phase (response rate and cleaning control) and in the subsequent editing and imputation phases.
The estimators used are post-stratified estimators. On the other hand, reweighting techniques have been applied (calibrated) according to sex, degree, university, residence in the PERE, affiliation to the Social Security and nationality, which allows adjusting the results of the deviations presented by the lack of response.
Finally, the comprehensive and centralised cleaning of the coding of variables such as occupation has allowed to ensure a homogeneous and controlled processing of the subsequent classifications of the sample avoiding biases in the results.
Sampling errors are calculated from the current employment status at different levels of disaggregation. The results can be found in the tabulation of the survey at the following link:
The coefficient of variation of the unemployment rate variable is as follows:
A1(Bachellor) = 2.39
A1(Masters) = 4.93
During the entire statistical process, there is a control of non-sampling errors.
The main source of non-sampling errors is due to the lack of response from respondents. Specifically for the EILU the two main response indicators are:
Proportion of effective sample (People interviewed / Theoretical sample) = 74.8% for Bachelor's graduates and 73.4% for Master's graduates
Response rate (People interviewed / People interviewable ) = 97.7% for Bachelor's graduates and 98.2% for Master's graduates
The non-response rate per unit: A4 (Bachelor) = 24.4%. A4 (Master)= 24.6%
A full non-response analysis document is provided which can be found at the following link:
https://www.ine.es/daco/daco42/eilu/evalfr_2014.pdf
The reference period for the data is from July to December 2019.
The publication of the final data takes place 10 months after the end of the reference period. TP2 = 10
Data dissemination is carried out in accordance with the availability calendar of the structural statistics that the INE prepares and publishes each year.
The availability of a methodology, a design and a common process of collection, cleaning, edition and elevation in all its geographical scope, guarantees the comparability of the results between the different Autonomous Communities of the universities in which they were graduated.
This is the second survey of labour insertion of university graduates, the first edition having been carried out in 2014 with university graduates from the 2009-10 academic year.
This is the first time that the survey collects information on Master's graduates, so there is no data from previous years with which to compare for this group.
The use of the National Classification of Education (NCED), the National Classification of Occupations (NCO) and the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE), allows comparability with other Statistical Operations that use these same classifications.
The coherence between the variables is contrasted from the moment of data capture through the computer application (control of errors and warnings) and is reviewed in the cleaning process in the office. This process has made it possible to provide the variables collected in the questionnaire.
Due to the fact that the survey was aimed at the group of university graduates for the academic year 2013-2014 and in order to reduce costs and optimise data collection, a web-based information collection (CAWI) has been chosen. This method gives the respondent the possibility of completing the survey at the desired time, in addition to significantly reducing the cost of collection.
The estimated budget appropriation necessary to finance this statistic foreseen in the 2020 Annual Programme is 653.05 thousand euros.
The INE of Spain has a policy which regulates the basic aspects of statistical data revision, seeking to ensure process transparency and product quality. This policy is laid out in the document approved by the INE board of directors on 13 March of 2015, which is available on the INE website, in the section "Methods and projects/Quality and Code of Practice/INE’s Quality management/INE’s Revision policy" (link).
This general policy sets the criteria that the different type of revisions should follow: routine revision- it is the case of statistics whose production process includes regular revisions-; more extensive revision- when methodological or basic reference source changes take place-; and exceptional revision- for instance, when an error appears in a published statistic-.
Final data are published and are not subject to revision. No preview of the results was published in the EILU-2019.
Published data are final, not subject to revision.
In accordance with the objectives of the survey and the data collection method, the type of sampling that has been used is a simple stratified random sample.
The framework from which the sample has been selected is formed by the list of graduates in the 2013-2014 academic year. This framework has been provided by the Ministry of Universities, and the variables that appear in it come from the files available in the Integrated University Information System (SIIU).
The SIIU is an information system coordinated by the General Secretariat of Universities, created by Royal Decree 861/2010 of 2 July, in order to cover the information needs of the Spanish university system as a whole.
For the analysis of the size of the global sample, it has been used the distribution of the total number of graduates by universities, educational sectors of the national classification of education (CNED-2014) and the Autonomous Community.
In order to achieve the objectives of the survey, the sample size was fixed at approximately 42,000 Bachelor's graduates and 16,000 Master's graduates.
In order to obtain the addresses of the graduates selected in the sample, as in all household surveys, the postal address of the Register was used. Bearing in mind that the graduates could be residing abroad, those who were not located in the Register were sought in the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad (PERE). Finally, for those who were not located in the PERE, a letter was sent to the address that appeared in the University Information Database (SIIU) of the General Secretariat of Universities, although these last addresses were more than four years old.
In order to reduce the burden on respondents, we have used administrative registers such as the files of Affiliations and Contribution Bases (Social Security) and the State Database of Persons with Disabilities (BEPD).
In order to help in the cleaning, administrative registers have also been used, such as the files of Contracts and Vocational Training Applicants of the Public State Employment Service (SEPE) and the files of Affiliations and Bases of Contribution (Social Security).
The first time that the survey of labour market insertion of university graduates (EILU) was carried out was in 2014.
From this edition of the survey, 2019, the frequency of data collection will be four years.
The questionnaire has been elaborated by a working group (in which the INE participated).
The interviews are carried out using a combined system of CAWI (computer-assisted web interview) and CATI (computer-assisted telephone interview). For the first phase (CAWI), a letter is sent with the necessary passwords to access the questionnaire via Internet. Prior to the CATI interview, the selected person is sent an informative letter with a 900 number in which additional information can be requested or an appointment can be made with the interviewer. During the entire collection period, the possibility of completing this form through CAWI remains open if the person so wishes.
Data collection has been carried out from July to December 2015.
The monitoring process of the information to guarantee its quality is carried out in two phases:
1/ During the course of the interview: both the computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) and the computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) allow the incorporation into the electronic questionnaire of validation rules for errors and inconsistencies that must be cleaned at the very moment of the interview. Likewise, it allows to incorporate warnings about slight inconsistencies to be directly compared with the respondent.
2/ Office work: Once the data has been received, a cleaning application allows an exhaustive control of the data, analysing errors, serious inconsistencies, slight inconsistencies, extreme values, monitoring of marginal distributions, crossing tables, etc.
In a complementary way, crosses are programmed or subsets of data are extracted to analyse specific variables.
The serious errors or invalid values detected in the first weeks of the information collection period through the CAWI channel made it possible to improve the electronic questionnaire of the CATI collection channel.
Errors that may be due to misinterpretation of questions were transmitted to the interviewers so that they could take this into account during the course of their work.
Among the processes applied to the initial data up to the obtaining of disseminable aggregated data are:
1/ Data cleaning. During the cleaning process, it is carried out the detection and cleaning of errors and inconsistencies in the main variables. According to the characteristics of each type of error, automatic imputation procedures are used, in some cases using information provided by administrative records.
2/ Adjustment of non-response and calibration3/ Calculation and revision of the elevation factors.
No temporal adjustments are made.