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Three Year Longitudinal Study of Graduate Employment Outcomes for Australian Apprentices and Trainees with and without Disabilities

ABSTRACT People with disabilities in Australia face significant employment barriers. Research and policy initiatives over the past fifteen years have consistently emphasised the benefits of vocational education and training generally, and apprenticeship and traineeships specifically, as leading to positive vocational pathways and employment outcomes for people with disabilities. However, there is a dearth of evidence of graduate outcomes for apprentices and trainees with disabilities. This paper presents the employment outcomes including hours of work and salaries for a cohort of apprenticeship and traineeship graduates with and without disabilities across a three-year longitudinal Australian study. Overall, there are positive employment outcomes for the research participants although graduates without a disability achieved better outcomes than graduates with disabilities and participants in receipt of the disability support pension had significantly lower wages than other participants with disabilities. There are indications that the gap in outcomes between graduates with and without disabilities has reduced over time, although generalisability of the findings may be limited by the observational study design. Nevertheless, the study has confirmed positive employment and related outcomes for apprenticeship and traineeship graduates with disabilities, which were sustained, or arguably improved, over the three-year period covered by the study.