Education, occupational class, and unemployment in the regions of the United Kingdom

This paper examines a measure of returns to education based on the probability of 'labour market success' associated with different levels of qualification. Two measures of “success” are used based on data from the 2001 UK Census for the different regions of the UK: first, the likelihood of persons in employment being in 'good' jobs; second, the likelihood of persons in the labour force being in employment. The results show that, in every region of the UK, better qualifications are significantly and strongly associated with higher probabilities of labour market success.