Initial vs recurrent training for skilled trades in Israel - results of a 7-year follow-up study

The earnings of former trainees for the skilled trades in Israel were monitored over a 7-year period. No significant differences were found between the annual earnings of graduates of 1-year adult training courses and of similar ones for teenagers (both under the aegis of the Ministry of Labour). This result suggests that workers postponing training until the early and mid-twenties, benefit both from continuity of study followed by work experience uninterrupted by army service and also, more particularly, from better career choices made at a more mature age. Yet, in cost-benefit terms, postponement, even for a few years only, is not a paying proposition, a finding confirming the main conclusions of Stoikov's well known model of recurrent education and training.