What kind of support do firms prefer to hire apprentices in a recession?

Abstract

Apprenticeship training is strongly developed in Switzerland. During the Covid-19 pandemic, training firms however faced severe difficulties and many decided not to (or were unable to) hire apprentices. To minimize negative consequences, authorities from the canton of Geneva introduced a series of measures to support the creation of apprenticeship positions in 2020, among which the following four key measures for firms signing a new apprenticeship contract: (i) refund of the first three months of the apprentice’s wage, (ii) premium of CHF 3,000 for hiring an apprentice for the first time, (iii) premium of CHF 10,000 for firms who build a new network to jointly hire and train an apprentice, and (iv) three months’ notice for contract start date. Using a discrete choice experiment, answered by more than 800 employers, we investigate the firms’ preferences regarding the support measures. The refund of apprentices’ wage stands out as the preferred measure overall, regardless of firm size and training behavior (i.e., training or non-training). The other financial measures seem less desirable, but nevertheless have a positive impact on small firms’ decisions. © The Author(s) 2025.

Keywords

Author Keywords

VET Apprenticeship training COVID-19 C25 Conditional logit models Discrete choice experiment H52 I28 J24 J44 M53 Public policy

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Delemont, JU, Switzerland

Funding & Acknowledgements

Canton de Genève

Funding text 1: The authors acknowledge funding from the Office pour l\u2019orientation, la formation professionnelle et continue (OFPC) of the canton of Geneva.; Funding text 2: The authors would like to thank the participants of the International Leading House Conference on the Economics of Vocational Education and Training held in Z\u00FCrich (June 2022), particularly Daniel Goller and Stefan Wolter for insightful suggestions and constructive comments. Two anonymous referees also provided excellent feedback on the previous version of the manuscript. Furthermore, the authors express their gratitude to the Office pour l\u2019orientation, la formation professionnelle et continue (OFPC) from the canton of Geneva, and in particular Frederic Clerc, Erwin Fisher and Natacha Juda, for their precious collaboration. The authors are also indebted to Fabio De Donato for providing a sample of firms extracted from the Business and Enterprise Register (BER).

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What kind of support do firms prefer to hire apprentices in a recession?

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