Do Chinese Employers Avoid Hiring Overqualified Workers? Evidence from an Internet Job Board

Abstract

Can having more education than a job requires reduce one’s chances of being offered the job? We study this question in a sample of applications to jobs that are posted on an urban Chinese website. We find that being overqualified in this way does not reduce the success rates of university-educated jobseekers applying to college-level jobs, but that it does hurt college-educated workers’ chances when applying to jobs requiring technical school, which involves three fewer years of education than college. Our results highlight a difficult situation faced by the recent large cohort of college-educated Chinese workers: They seem to fare poorly in the competition for jobs, both when pitted against more-educated university graduates and less-educated technical school graduates.

Citation

Shen, K. and Kuhn, P. (2013), "Do Chinese Employers Avoid Hiring Overqualified Workers? Evidence from an Internet Job Board", Giulietti, C., Tatsiramos, K. and Zimmermann, K.F. (Ed.) Labor Market Issues in China (Research in Labor Economics, Vol. 37), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0147-9121(2013)0000037005