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This paper explores the link between skill and qualification mismatch and labor productivity using cross-country industry data for 19 OECD countries. Utilizing mismatch indicators aggregated from micro-data sourced from the recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), the main results suggest that higher skill and qualification mismatch is associated with lower labor productivity, with over-skilling and under-qualification accounting for most of these impacts. A novel result is that higher skill mismatch is associated with lower labor productivity through a less efficient allocation of resources, presumably because when the share of over-skilled workers is higher, more productive firms find it more difficult to attract skilled labor and gain market shares at the expense of less productive firms. At the same time, a higher share of under-qualified workers is associated with both lower allocative efficiency and within-firm productivity – that is, a lower ratio of high productivity to low productivity firms. While differences in managerial quality can potentially account for the relationship between mismatch and within-firm productivity, the paper offers some preliminary insights into the policy factors that might explain the link between skill mismatch and resource allocation.

This paper investigates the prevalence and distribution of under-skilling across Europe. First, in order to understand why under-skilling occurs, three main theoretical approaches are discussed: (a) Inefficient signaling, (b) Skill shortages, and (c) On-the-job training substitution. Second, in order to measure the real dimension of the problem, we use the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS) ¹ to assess whether workers’ skills were lower than required at the point they started their job. Our results are rather mixed. First, we find under-skilling being related to some academic fields such as Health & Medicine, and Engineering. Second, we find that under-skilling is more prevalent among, not surprisingly, young workers but, rather unexpectedly, among permanent workers working in high-skilled occupations.

Purpose: This chapter aims to analyse the current literature on the supply and demand for skills in the UK labour market to identify key trends and themes around skill mismatch, identify gaps and areas for future research.

Method: Selected articles were analysed to identify key themes and trends in the existing literature.

Findings: The overall finding is that the UK labour market suffers from various forms of widespread skill mismatch, but most particularly in the form of skill shortage. The areas with the most notable skill shortage highlighted in the literature include basic literacy, numeracy and digital; employability including leadership and management; STEM and health-related areas; teaching and training and a range of higher-level skills (including leadership and management, digital and creative, and industry-specific skills in STEM and health-related sectors, financial and business services, technology media and telecommunications, as well as teaching and training). Skill mismatch in the form of skill shortages in these areas is projected to worsen considerably by 2030, with some areas expected to suffer acute shortages by this time. Continued improvements to the education system will help to ensure the pipeline of future workers. However, changes to the education system are unlikely to impact on 80% of the future 2030 workforce who are already working and active in the UK labour market.

Originality/value of paper: The chapter provides a review of key literature in the field and aggregates key findings, so a wider picture of the extent and nature of the UK's skill mismatch challenge can be appreciated.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of factors associated with over-education among PhD graduates in Italy.

The investigation is based on recently released data collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics by means of interviews with a large sample of PhD recipients, carried out a few years after they obtained their PhD degree. The author measured the mismatch between the current job and previous PhD studies using two direct subjective evaluations of over-education, which distinguish between the usefulness of the PhD title to get the current job position and to perform the current work activities. Even if the incidence of over-education varies according to the measurement applied, the author found that it is highly widespread among PhD recipients. The econometric analyses are aimed at identifying factors associated with over-education and are based on the standard probit model and the bivariate probit model with sample selection which allows to control for self selection into employment.

The results show that over-education is significantly correlated with: first, a number of PhD-related variables, such as the scientific field of study, having attended courses or visiting periods abroad; second, some job-related characteristics, such as working in the academia or being mainly involved in research-related activities; third, the channel of access to the job; and fourth, residential location.

This paper contributes to the literature focusing on job-education mismatch by providing, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first empirical analysis of over-education among PhD recipients in Italy; moreover, it provides some useful insights to evaluate the professional doctoral graduates in Italy.

This article focuses on the Spanish labour market, and its primary objectives are to analyse the factors determining the ICTs usage at workplace, and examine how the workers' e-skills match with the job tasks requiring ICTs. Furthermore, it will explore whether doing ICTs training activities has a positive effect on the probability of carrying out appropriately the ICTs at work.

The methodology applied is an ordered response model analysing how the workers' e-skills match with the knowledge required to the ICTs usage at the job. This econometric specification will control by the selection bias generated because not all employees use ICTs to perform the job tasks. Data are obtained from the Survey on Equipment and Use of ICTs in Households (ICTS-H Survey).

Educational attainment and the type of ICTs training are the most relevant variables to explain the ICTs usage and the quality of the job match.

Data used are cross-sectional, and it excludes the possibility of observing how the workers' careers evolve depending on their ICTs training.

The methodology applied allows the authors to obtain the marginal effects to the variables explaining the probability of using ICTs at job, and how the workers' knowledge match with the e-skill required by the employers.

The results are a source of information to policymakers about how workers face the introduction of ICTs in the labour market.

To the best of author's knowledge, the article's topic and its methodology are unprecedented in the economic literature and, specially, in the Spanish case.

The purpose of this paper is to present the stylised facts of over-education among European graduates over time (1998–2013), paying special attention to the measurement issues.

The authors use two different sources, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012, and the European Union Labour Force Survey 1998–2013, with two different aims. The authors employ the first one to make a detailed analysis of the different forms of measuring over-education and its implications in terms of the result obtained. The analysis of the second one responds to studying the evolution and characteristics of over-education in Europe.

In the first place, the paper provides evidence of the high level of sensitivity of the level of measured over-education to the type of methodology used. Such difference is even higher when the authors focus on skills vs educational mismatch. The work also shows how with all their shortcomings, the measures of over-education used in the analysis point to the existence of convergence in over-education levels among the European countries of the sample (only interrupted by the crisis), in a context of reduction of over-education rates in many countries.

Researchers should be particularly careful when estimating over-education, because of the strong implications in terms of the so different results obtained when choosing between competing methods.

The analysis abounds in the implications of the use of different methodologies of estimating over-education in terms of both size and ranking among European countries. The production of long-run and updated estimates of over-education for a large sample of countries is done using a homogenous database and different estimation methods.

This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by ever-evolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to “be creative,” while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology’s tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward – beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state – to include the ever-evolving, infrastructural, socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.

This paper seeks to report on research investigating students' and industry's expectations and assumptions of the desired attributes of hospitality employees.

Views on a range of questions about the value of a hospitality degree are analysed, based on a survey of 74 hospitality managers and 137 students.

The divergence in views between students and industry was significant. Students thought knowledge and skills were important for new employees, but industry was far more interested in personality. To get promoted, students thought they would have to become good communicators, but industry was more interested in initiative. Industry's views suggest that managers value attitudinal attributes over skills, and are therefore prepared to help employees gain the skills needed for their roles.

There were limited responses from hotel general managers (GMs). Their views on what graduates need to accomplish to reach the position of GM would have added value to this study, so further research focusing on GMs' views is recommended.

This paper analyses the beliefs of hospitality students and industry regarding the desired attributes of hospitality employees. Their expectations and assumptions are significantly different, and the gap is a cause for concern for educators and industry to address.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of access to skilled labor in explaining firms’ sales growth subject to the controlling influence of a wide range of firm-specific characteristics and country-level economic and non-economic factors.

The analysis uses a consistent and large firm-level data set from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys that includes 138 developing countries. An instrumental variables model with a GMM estimator is used for estimating the impact of access to skilled labor on firm performance. In order to obtain more robust estimators, the analysis introduces country-level controls reflecting the influence of economic and institutional factors, such as economic and financial development, institutional governance, education and technological progress.

The results document a significant and positive association between access to skilled labor and firm performance in the developing world. The explanatory power of access to skilled labor remains broadly robust after controlling for a wide range of firm-specific characteristics: sectoral and geographical influences matter. The results also show that the association between labor skill constraints and firm performance is mitigated by country-level factors but in diverse ways. Development, institutions, education and technological progress exert various mitigating effects on firm-level behavior regarding access to skilled labor.

The paper’s novel contribution is threefold: first, it uses joint firm, sector and country-level information to analyze the role of access to skilled labor on firm performance; second, it uses consistently produced information at the firm level from 138 developing countries; and, third, it considers the controlling impact of a wide range of country-level factors that reflect a country’s overall development, institutions and evolution.