Cross-sectional survey shows language skills boost earnings while family roles constrain female mobility in multilingual youth, highlighting persistent structural labor barriers.
Key Points
Investigate how German language proficiency influences employment outcomes, income levels, and labor mobility across genders in post-conflict transition economies.
Conducted a non-probabilistic cross-sectional survey across eight municipalities in Kosovo (N = 707; 56.25% female) recruited via universities, language institutes, and youth networks.
Assessed demographic variables, labor market status, German proficiency, and earnings brackets using an ordered logit model.
The ordered logit model revealed that German language proficiency and prior work experience were strongly associated with higher income categories, whereas age and higher education lacked statistically significant effects.
Employment was heavily concentrated in the call center industry (82.18%), with women exhibiting higher representation in education than men (6.93% vs. 3.96%).
Females reported higher rates of emigration consideration than males (13.15% vs. 9.90%), but also higher rates of rejecting emigration due to family obligations (11.60% vs. 9.48%).