Measuring occupational mismatch: overeducation and overskill in Europe. Evidence from PIAAC

Occupational mismatch has been a hot topic in the economics literature in the last decades, but still today there is no consensus on how to conceptualize and measure this phenomenon. We explore the unique opportunity offered by the recent PIAAC survey to measure occupational mismatch at individual level based on both education variables (overeducation) and on skills proficiency variables (overskilling), using both objective and subjective methods for each. We use data for 17 European countries and compute a total of 20 indicators of occupation mismatch. We find that indeed the conceptualization and measurement of this phenomenon play an important role and that education and skill mismatch do not measure the same phenomenon. In fact, only a low percentage of population is both education and skill mismatched, while the majority is mismatched in only one of these types. At country level, we find a negative correlation between the incidence of education and skill mismatch, which has important policy implications when it comes to address this labour market inefficiency.

FLISI Sara;  GOGLIO Valentina;  MERONI Elena Claudia;  CAETANO RODRIGUES JORGE RODRIGUES FERRO Maria Margarida;  VERA TOSCANO Maria Esperanza; 

2016-05-27

SPRINGER

JRC91340

0303-8300,   

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-016-1292-7,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC91340,   

10.1007/s11205-016-1292-7,