Labor market and workplace outcomes among aviation maintenance TVET graduates in the Philippines

Evidence on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in safety-critical sectors often ends at placement or licensure, leaving limited evidence on early-career labor-market performance and employer-side operational outcomes. This study examines whether aviation-maintenance TVET graduates in the Philippines exhibit different labor-market and workplace outcomes from matched graduates in other technical fields. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, the study combined propensity-score matching with enforced common support, supplementary difference-in-differences and event-study diagnostics for log monthly wages where panel data permitted, and qualitative interviews and focus groups to identify explanatory mechanisms and contextual conditions. Relative to matched non-aviation technical graduates, aviation-maintenance graduates had a 16.5-percentage-point higher 12-month employment rate and an approximately 12.3% benchmark-equivalent wage premium among employed graduates, anchored to a real monthly difference of ₱2,217. Employer records further indicated an 18% lower maintenance-error rate, corresponding to an incidence-rate ratio of 0.82, and 33.9 fewer maintenance-attributable delay minutes per employee-year. These adjusted differences were translated into a conservative Social Return on Investment framework over 5- to 10-year horizons under alternative discount rates, supported by sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo simulation. In the pooled five-year base case at a 7% discount rate, the pathway generated a net SROI ratio of 0.38, equivalent to a conventional SROI of 1.38:1. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis produced a median conventional SROI of 1.12:1, with a 95% simulation interval of 0.86–1.46. Overall, the findings indicate that the aviation-maintenance pathway is associated with favorable comparative labor-market and workplace outcomes, although these should be interpreted as adjusted pathway differentials rather than pure causal estimates of program quality.